Why whole house surge protectors are not enough

Please don’t comment on something you know nothing about.

@vinylshadow Given your series of posts I find your choice of words really funny.

I was only half joking when I wrote "safety be damned".

I would say the same thing about the person who wrote this. They either don't know what they are doing or are lying.  I get the impression the UberBUSS is like the BlueCircle and TLP products. Stack as much capacitance across the line as possible, safety be damned!

Then I came across this for a different product that has their PFC function on whatsbestforum.

I get the impression the UberBUSS is like the BlueCircle and TLP products. Stack as much capacitance across the line as possible, safety be damned!

@britamerican Isn’t there an NEC or UL limit to the amount of capacitance you can put on the AC line, before any primary windings??

@erik_squires Why thank you. Thank you very much. 

@britamerican Isn’t there an NEC or UL limit to the amount of capacitance you can put on the AC line, before any primary windings??

If you asked me that 15-20 years ago maybe I would have known the answer. I doubt UL or NEC would ever say the capacitor can only be this big. They will write a bunch of paragraphs that will have the same effect. 5 minutes on Google and I found maximum of 34V after 1 second.

Caelin Gabriel and Shunyata make suppressors for medical gear so I think they're a lot more knowledgeable than most people here. I spoke with Tim from Transient Protection Design who said that their whole home unit has MOVs that turn on at 150v. I encouraged him to have his engineer write something more detailed that I could share. They also recommend a defense on depth approach for sensitive electronics, and have detailed pdf showing how a home filled with electronics might be protected.

Caelin Gabriel and Shunyata make suppressors for medical gear so I think they’re a lot more knowledgeable than most people here.

Great, so which of their gear has been UL or ETL tested? Do they promote any of it as surge protectors?

spoke with Tim from Transient Protection Design who said that their whole home unit has MOVs that turn on at 150v

That is interesting if true.  Are you sure that isn't how it clamps after activation?

This Belkin surge protector in front of your gear rack is all you need.  Less than $45.

Did I miss the response to what we think about "Envionmental Potentials" as a protective technolgy? VH Audio has always seemed to be edgy, but grounded in things that work, and they carry their products. I would really love to have more protection for my system than the whole house Leviton I have and several Shunyata Defenders plugged into my amps dedicated lines.

Caelin Gabriel and Shunyata make suppressors for medical gear so I think they're a lot more knowledgeable than most people here.

Than most people here is not setting a very high bar but even then I am not sure. They say a lot of dumb stuff.

150 vrms. They use 140v MOV probably. Not doing anything till 240 DC. A big surge is going to be over 400V.  The datasheets don't give a lot of details. 

What's the controversy?  Whole house plus a power bar for surge protection. Seems pretty obvious. MOVs don't do anything to your audio. Crazy to believe they do.

The article I referenced in my blog has the only independent survey if surge protector performance I know of.  Furman and Tripp Lite measured among the best with the lowest measured let through voltages.

Interested in protecting your outdoor A/C condenser from power surges and brownouts? This package looks to be one of the best I've ever seen:

RSH-50 VRM KIT

@dpop I've never seen over/undervoltage protection for residential AC units, so that is pretty cool. I hope it's not extravagantly expensive.

We do see AC unit surge protectors around here though.

@erik_squires Around $250. I’ve just recently discovered these, and plan on installing one on my condenser.

I also have these on my humidifier, dehumidifier, refrigerator and furnace (i.e., any device I own that has a motor or compressor), even though I rarely ever experience brownouts (you never know though when they might pop up). I like to be proactive (some may call it OCD). This also looks to have one of the lowest *specified* clamping voltages (140 V) I’ve ever seen on a surge protector. Even though I already incorporate a ton of surge protection in my house, and on my video and audio gear, I may even consider adding one of these to the audio and video (non power amp) AC feed for this gear:

Heavy Duty 20-Amp 2400-Watt Appliance Surge Protector

Interesting!! Based on what I've read about lightning striking outdoor AC units directly I really think that it's our outdoor units, not our stereos, which need a separate panel.  That is, if I could redo my house wiring, I'd run a panel from the meter straight to the outdoor heat pumps, with their own breakers and surge protectors, and another line from the meter into the house.

I mean of course to meet code 100%.  What I'd avoid if building new is to have the electricity come inside to a service panel then back out to AC units.  As it is, any lightning striking those outside units gets to come inside before meeting a surge protector.

I understand what you’re saying Erik. You’ve given me another idea. As of right now (and as with almost any), my outdoor A/C condenser’s earth ground goes back into the house, and attaches to the panelboard’s grounding bus bar. If we’re looking at lightning protection for a condenser (if it sustains a direct hit), one would want that strike to immediately discharge into the ground, *before* hitting the circuit breaker box, and *then* discharging into the ground via the ground rod(s) feeding the circuit breaker box's grounding bus bar. For many this may not be feasible, but in my case, my ground rod is right beside my A/C condenser. While maintaining the current condenser earth ground connection, I may install another low impedance earth ground directly from the A/C condenser to the ground rod (again, OCD).

Having been a Radio Broadcast Engineer for decades, this is basically the same thing we do when grounding broadcast towers. The main ground system exists around the broadcast tower (many times incorporating a ring of ten 8’-10’ grounding rods cadwelded together), so that the strike can *immediately* discharge into the ground, *before* entering a transmitter building or studio/office building. The rest of the star ground system for the facility then feeds off of this broadcast tower base ground system.

@dpop That is an excellent idea.  As you know, for the sake of others who may read this, you may not have separate grounds, but so long as you bond everything at the same ground potential you may run multiple ground conductors to the same grounding rod(s), which probably should be plural.  

@erik_squires Yes, already aware, and yes, for the sake of others.

One other thing (that I learned in broadcast engineering): many times a lighting strike discharge does not like to take corners. Straight wires (with the least amount of bends) are always encouraged when designing grounds that will dissipate and discharge lightning strikes quickly into the ground. Also, due to the skin effect of wire at certain frequencies, and the general frequency (spectrum) of a typical lightning strike; in the broadcast world, we almost always use 3"- 5" copper strap (very low resistance with lots of surface area) when dealing with lightning and grounding.  

Just to lower the tone for a moment, I did a trip around the house and found that two of my surge suppressors were no longer suppressing anything. One replaced, one on order. Goes to show - some attention required.

Here's another surge protector that has a very low (specified) clamping voltage (135V), as compared to many other surge protectors that don't clamp until 300 volts, or even as high as 600 volts. The linked surge protector may be marketed as a refrigerator surge protector, but it could still be used for audio and video surge protection, especially since it has a very low clamping voltage.

ENDMAN Refrigerator Surge Protector Three Outlet Voltage Protector for Home Appliances with Time Delay, Protects Against Brownout, Spike, Instant Surge All Voltage Abnormalities

The link in my original post has become very popular but the blog has moved.  That same post is now here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2023/10/time-for-new-surge-suppression.html

And also new writing here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2024/05/whole-house-surge-protectors-are-not.html

I use both a type II (currently the Siemens FS140) and point of use (units vary). On my main system, I run a large (10kVa) iso transformer that is dedicated to the system and the manufacturer added a surge board inside the NEMA case, so all the lines coming off the transformer are theoretically protected.

I did experiment with various brands of point of use protectors on my main system when I was back in NY (where our power was iffy- old infrastructure along the Hudson north of the city) and could hear the effects of various units, which is one of the reasons I went with the Iso transformer approach when we moved to Texas. (The infrastructure where I am, close to the city is much newer and sounded "clean" when I first set up the system but was waiting for the transformer to be built and delivered, but the grid in Texas has some pretty well-documented issues that I won’t go into here).

If you talk to the folks at ZeroSurge, they will tell you that you need point of use rather than whole house because most surges are emanating from inside the house. And of course, a whole house SP won’t do much for a direct strike, but those aren’t that common (I do have a friend here who, within a year of buying a house had it hit by lightening which caused a large fire, and took 1.5 years to rebuild, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility). 

When I was having the whole house back up generator installed, another rabbit hole to research given some of the problems Fremer claimed to have- which included degraded sound by the very presence of the auto transfer switch (ATS) in circuit, I worked out a plan that met code to wire the main system power from the incoming service before the ATS/generator. (Rex, who may be on these pages and was featured in the video of rewiring Framer’s house, consulted me at a very reasonable fee, using photos, drawings and phone calls). I worked closely with the electrical inspector here, to make sure everything was kosher. The hi-fi subsystem is NOT connected to the generator-- in fact, just the opposite- I wanted it as far away from the generator ATS in wiring as possible. The solution-- using an ATS with its own service panel-custom made by Square D for Kohler--made it far easier to do this- only those appliances connected to the ATS panel are generator supported. 

One of the reasons I raise the back up generator issue is that I wanted our our main floor air conditioning supported if we lost power during the summer and the generator has the capacity to do that. In researching air conditioning start up current, I found that older type units can draw crazy amounts of current on start up from a "locked rotor" type--which is probably dated. The units we use not only have variable speed fans but variable compressors which provide a soft start and ramp up and down based on sensors-- tons of semiconductors in these but they provide very even air distribution. (Our furnaces are gas, so very little electrical draw).

I’m not an electrician and not an EE, but am very respectful of electricity. I do think our hi-fi systems "ride the rail" and depend on clean power. When we go into brown out conditions during peak summer, I simply don’t use the main system at all. Brownouts can also do damage to sensitive equipment. I do have a UPS sine wave output device connected to the main ethernet router and wi-fi antenna, mainly so we don’t suffer an ethernet loss during the switch over from utility power to generator power. (It's not because I want to cruise social media in the midst of an outage, but the security system, cameras, zone sensors and the like all depend on ethernet and wireless comms). 

Sorry for the long saga but thought I would share my experience. I have not tried the latest generation of audiophile power conditioner/surge protectors simply b/c I have no need for them. The main system is extremely efficient at 104db and you can hear any gremlin, from the grid or an appliance. The system, when all is operating properly, is dead quiet. 

Good luck, stay safe and if I have any wisdom to impart it is that Code is a minimum, and largely for safety, not sonics. So you have to meet and exceed code in my estimation without going nuts. 

@whart ,

You seemed to have covered all the bases, Kudos.

Bob

If you talk to the folks at ZeroSurge, they will tell you that you need point of use rather than whole house

I am so disappointed in their marketing.  They miss the point entirely, and make it an either this OR that argument when it should be this AND that.

Many have unfortunately been sold on whole-house solutions being all they need, which is not true.  It’s also not true that point of use is enough, especially with so many devices we use not easy to protect with a strip.  Where the surge starts from is not that relevant IMHO.

In any event, I cover the physics in my blog.

You bring up brownouts.  This is why I recommend that the top of the line Furman with voltage regulation is the way to go.  We have all sort of power issues, from summer sags to power explosions, car accidents, thunder storms and recently had nearly 70 MPH gusts of wind.  I don’t always know what’s going to hit when so I rely on Furman with AR (voltage regulation), LiFT (noise removal), SMP (series mode surge protection and EVS (Extreme Voltage Shutdown).

About once a year EVS shuts my stereo down when I forgot I had left it on.  Twice a month power goes off momentarily.  Sometimes from storms, usually not.