Why whole house surge protectors are not enough

@emergingsoul

If you have a large electrical storm rolling through, probably a good idea to unplug your amplifiers and components.

And I do but honestly I can’t be here or be aware of all of them in advance.

@mfinch

I work with 3 retired Power Company employees, they say that whole house surge protecters are a joke and that they don’t work. The company makes it so hard to file a claim, they they almost never have to pay. These are not linemen, but management.

The fine print in the warranty make filing a claim very difficult unless there is visible proof of a surge, which there often is not, or at least not one most of us could detect. Honestly I never really think of the claimed damage coverage when I buy new units. I focus on the technology and what I’m protecting.

If they sold the WHSP as protecting the TV then yeah, those things wouldn't work.

True, some devices work much better than others, so caveat emptor!

If the spike your equipment encounters is coming from the same branch circuit feeding it (say a wonky vacuum cleaner in the next room), the spike will probably get to your components before it is snubbed by the WHSP back at the service entrance panel. It can be tough to explain that to the cleaning service.

@knittersspouse 

It's true that with wire distance the ability to snub a surge via a short to ground or neutral decreases, but the function does occur.  The further the surge occured and the closer it was to say your TV the less effective a panel protector can be, but there are many branch circuits in the modern home, so having a panel unit to prevent a surge on circuit 1 from making it to circuits 2 through 30 is a good thing.

Erik - 

I totally agree.  I speak from the hard experience where the contractor originally building my home ran out of positions in the SE panel and rather than put in breakers with two circuits per box position or add a secondary panel, they just put the last 4 rooms on the same circuit.  Running the toaster and the garage door opener at the same time always popped the breaker. 

When I redesigned the home, I put in a new main SE panel that was the max allowed by the local utility and then added several subpanels throughout the house.  With well-marked and dedicated circuits available, it becomes very easy to isolate my gear when desirable. 

If the stud walls are still open, it is trivial to run separate circuits for your power amp and your lower-power devices.  I also got a deal on some cable so I ran 1/0 aluminum from the main panel to the subs, so there was minimal drop to each of the 60A panels. By running some #8 cable for the power amp back to the subpanel, that gives a fairly stiff source for the amp to draw from, and compared to the cost of the designer cables used between the wall socket and the devices, the extra in-wall cable cost was almost trivial. 

 #8 has twice the max allowable ampacity of the #12 that is almost universally used for residential outlet circuits, so when the amps ask for power, the in-wall wiring can provide it, potentially adding some punch to your music.  You just have to be careful to get #8 copper, not aluminum to get the full benefit because aluminum is used for the larger wire sizes because it becomes much cheaper, but the conductivity is somewhat less.  When you get up to sizes like the 1/0, those are almost always aluminum, and at that ampacity, the droop caused by the draw of your amp is minimal.

Anyone care to explain how a vaccum clear, or anythig inside a home, can cause a surge?  Surges always come from outside the home.

Jerry

Mfinch - 

You may be right that it is hard to get the utility to pay for a new WHSP box, but my goal is to protect my audio equipment investment, and if I can just replace a couple of hundred bucks worth of surge protection and still have my sound system, I call that a win! 

Trouble is, not many folks rig up their WHSP box with full temporary isolation so they can take it out of circuit and test it to see if it still works after you think it has taken a hit.  I'm "old school" and although in-circuit testing can be done, I feel more comfortable when testing just the device, unaffected by anything else. 

In general, the components that provide the surge protection DO degrade over time from the many small hits they will inevitably receive, and so should be tested or replaced once or twice a decade, or more often if your area might indicate it is needed (Florida or similar?).