My house recently took a near lightning strike that fried the circuit boards in one of my garage door openers, the stove and the board in my Watercop whole house water shut off valve. I am able to replace the boards but am $400 lighter as a result. As a preventive measure in the future I am considering installing a whole house surge arrestor and also install secondary surge arrestors at the more sensitive appliances. I already have 6 outlet surge strips on the computer and TV. Does anyone have a recommendation on the whole house arrestor? I figured something by SquareD (or another reputable supplier) is a sure bet but was look for a part number. My service entrance is 150amps 240vac. Thanks
hmm, thats weird. When my dad's house got hit, It just fried a few Circuit breakers in the garage. Went to Home Depot and replaced them
I'll look at what they put on my panel after our lighting strike and get you th manufacturer and model number.
Lightning is funny stuff, my house has been hit three times and you just can't predict what it will fry. Surge protectors are good, but they may or may not help.
I always thought that circuit breakers weren't gonna help against a lightning strike. If it's enough voltage to arc the half-mile from the cloud to the ground.. it'd be enough voltage to arc across a half-inch gap :P
Yeah, I understand there's no sure fix as lightning will do what it wants but if I can provide a prevention measure, as little as it may be, I'll at least sleep better when the next storn comes around.
After it happened to us twice (once to the tune of several thousand bucks) I found where our power company will install a whole house system on everything inbound and keep up with it. Had it done several years ago and have had zero issues since.
Lucky. Our utility's position is that it sucks to be a customer. GRH, let us know what you find out, would you? I've got the same problem and would like to do the same thing as you.
You can get a cheap unit like the one in the picture, it won't have the LED's but will do the same thing, for around $20 plus installation. That style is a one time use arrester.
L1 is 120 to neutral L2 is -120 to neutral There is no 2 phase, it's either single or 3 phase. L1/L2 in single phase are not out of phase on a sine wave, one wave is up and the other down so that the peak to peak measurements add up 240.
Scott, I researched some more and ended up buying this unit off Amazon. Eaton CHSPT2Ultra. It has the highest surge current of the units they offer and can be mounted directly to a power panel through a knockout.
One of my customer told me when her house got hit by lightning, some of her electrical outlets got fried, and her chimney bricks looked normal but when she touched them, they turned to mushes. Cost her $20k to replace the whole back side of the house brick by brick.
Good unit. :up: All the major manu's make whole house suppressors of differing capacity & quality. The thing to keep in mind is that these are not "set and forget" items, they do suffer over repeated voltage spikes (they happen daily), and will need to be replaced after sufficient damage has been taken. The "good ones" are self-diagnostic and will alert you when protection is compromised...but you still gotta go look at it to know. :up:
Bring on the lightning I installed a whole house surge arrestor just below my house panel and put point of use surge arrestors on the devices at the outlets. I installed a breaker type surge arrestor in my shop panel. Lastly, I installed a telco surge arrestor just below the Telco NID box
