Surge protectors--how many $ make sense?

@rfagon

My no bs answer is I dont have that specific model.

I have a much older AR model which feeds two other Furmans with SMP.

Under normal operation in my HT it is silent and produces no heat, BUT occassionally when the incoming voltage is low I do hear a mechanical hum.

Its also like 10 years old, so not sure.  I am about to renovate my HT setup and will replace it.

My 2015 house in the American Southwest has a breaker board that trips if you burp too loudly.

@incorrigable 

That's actually not a good thing.  Since you had an electrician inspect your audio system I imagine you also had the panel inspected?

I've been in this 2006 home for 4 years and the only time I've had a breaker trip was entirely my fault or during GFCI testing.

@panzrwagn

I would also check out Ting - www.tingfire.com - an electrical arc fault detector.

Oh, that’s pretty cool, honestly. :) The NEC has been steadily going towards more arc fault detection in the home. They went from 1 per bedroom to 1 in every 120V circuit in the home pretty much. You can upgrade most breakers to AFCI, but none of them have the cool reporting in this unit.

I had a Furman unit with voltage readout.  That's why I ended up getting a unit with AVR.  I could see how much my voltage wavered through the day, up to 130V peaks when I was in a high rise.

Now that I'm in a home I get long term, seasonal and daily voltage swings which my PC doesn't care about, but the AVR keeps me +_ a few volts, or it shuts down. Nothing in between.

@mikhailark 

Probably not.  That's why I recommend Furman.  ZeroSurge also has a big presense in the pro market.

PS - Furman and Panamax are owned by the same parent company and some equivalent features are available through Panamax as well but be careful as Furman and Panamax have a lot of models with different feature sets.  The minimum I recommend is the Furman with SMP & LiFT. 

@rfagon

You bring up a lot of items, and that's why I initially recommended the Furman with SMP and AVR.  SMP is best in class surge protection, while AVR will ensure your amps and other gear get fed consistently better voltage than your wall outlet might have. 

I've even had contractors using circular saws on the same circuit as my amp and other gear.  The voltage never ever wavered.

Your point about the difference in clamping (let through) voltages is also correct.  Whole house units are not intended to protect your most delicate electronics, and the NEC as well as manufacturers recommend they be supported by point of use protection.   I wrote about this in detail here, but series mode protection (Furman with SMP, ZeroSurge, Brickwall) is faster and clamps lower, plus usually cut off during brown outs and white outs.

OP:

Over-current protection is a requirement for today’s high current audio power distributors.

True, but almost any power strip has one.

There is a better solution — the hydraulic electromagnetic breaker that utilizes low-impedance relays and a sensing coil that reads the current level without heating up or limiting current.

That’s cool, still won’t help you in case of an incoming voltage surge. Breakers protect against shorts downstream. They are all (including this one) too slow and may never react to a voltage surge which can blow through nanometer scale insulation in silicon because a damaging surge voltage may not ever cross the current x time envelope needed to trip the breaker.

In this sense the series mode vendors (Furman with SMP, ZeroSurge, Brickwall) are all correct.  You need the upstream filter to slow a surge down long enough to have time to respond.  A breaker isn't it.

i notice that UL voltage protection rating may be “listed” or “component recognized”. Can you please comment on the difference? Thx

@rfagon

I cannot.   I suggest going by the actual third party testing conducted by Wirecutter.  Series mode protectors (Furman with SMP, Zerosurge, Brickwall) generally have much lower let through voltages than those which are primarily MOV based.   I wrote about it here. 

OP:

Be careful as some are marketed as "offers surge protection" which is different from having a UL or ETL certification as a surge protection device. Actual surge protectors will be certified to UL 1449.  It's the difference between throwing an MOV into the box and actually undergoing high voltage testing.

I think I am really talking about power conditioners with surge protection.

My biggest question is first and foremost whether a unit has been tested and certified as a surge protector.  Boutique audio "conditioners" rarely are.

My SC home is 18 years old.  It doesn't require whole house surge suppression vut it was the first thing I dId.  Prior experience plus moving to a lightning prone area made this essential for me. 

I forgot to mention that on new construction and work done on existing systems, a whole house surge protector is now required as I understand it. 

As of 2020 the NEC requires it, local codes will vary.  Among the things they protect is the house wiring itself, as well as anything else you can't or wouldn't normally put on a surge strip, like fire alarms, GFCI outlets, smart switches...

Sorry to hear about your loss. Living in San Francisco and Los Angeles I had to pay a lot for real power conditioning.

The absolute safest, and most affordable solution is this Furman with voltage regulation, series protection, and automatic over/under voltage shutoff.

This comes up so often I wrote a blog post with more detail here.

I also wrote specifically about hos a whole house unit and high quality surge protector work here and why you need both.

Basically a whole house unit has a much higher let through voltage than the best surge "strips."  Good for your range, not so much for your laptop or audio/video gear. The manufacturers recommend the use of both.