Whole House Lightning Protection

[KG4IDA]

A friend bought a whole house surge supressor that attaches to her service box. It cost her less than $200 installed. Anyone try something like this? Will it work? The utility worker who did it for her thinks they're a good idea.

[Hines57]

The best answer is...maybe. Lightning does really weird stuff. Sometimes protection will stop it, sometimes not. Probably not a bad idea. Lightning will go wherever it wants.

[13bullets]

We use them at work. I work in a power plant, so someone that know a whole lot more about them than we do seems to think they work. I however, am of the belief that enough electricity, such as lightning, will go where it wants. Protective devices tend to melt when enough voltage and current pass through them.

[wired]

10' ground rods are the first tier of protection

[tileguy1]

Lightning is quite weird, it can blaze out your most anti-lightning gear, hell it can fry you while taking a shower!

[kc8ykd]

My parents have a whole house surge suppressor, I have never examined it, but it seems to work since they've never lost a device during a storm. I can examine it more if you want, it's attached outside the house where the service is connected from the street.

Another thing to check out is suppressors for cable and phone lines coming into the house. A lot of people do the right thing and get good surge suppressors for the electrical outlets, but totally neglect phones and cable.

This is a possible scenario:

A person plugs their TV, receiver, cable box, dvd player, game console into a surge suppressor and assumes they are safe only to find after a storm they are all blown.

How?

A surge could have entered through the cable and destroyed the cable box, well, the cable box is connected to the receiver and the TV destroying both of them. The game console could be plugged into the TV or the receiver, thus destroying it.

For some of the radio gear I use, the surge suppressor uses some nifty gas system which blows out when a surge occurs and needs to be replaced afterwords. Even a satellite dish connection should use an in-line suppressor.

This is what I'd use to protect computers and audio/video gear:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842111079
TRIPP LITE ISOBAR6DBS 6 Feet 6 NEMA 5-15R Outlets 2850 joules Surge Suppressor - Retail

* AC Clamping: 140V
* Certifications: UL, FCC, cUL
* EMI/RFI Noise Filter: Up to 40 dB
* Input Voltage: 120V
* Output Amperage Capacity: 15
* Output Watt Capacity: 1440 Watts
* Protection Modes: H-N, N-G and H-G
* Series: Isobar
* Model #: ISOBAR6DBS
* Item #: N82E16842111079
* Return Policy: Standard Return Policy $250,000 Ultimate Lifetime Insurance (USA and Canada only) covers connected components against surge damage...for life!

[opto_isolator]

http://www.metertreater.com/

This is what most power providers use. The only bad thing is, they typically won't let you buy it, but you "rent it" instead. That's good if it blows, however they aren't really that expensive. You can get them for about $60-70 on ebay.

If you also have an external power panel right by your meter (mine does, my house was built in 2004), and have a Square D panel, you can get something called a "Surge Breaker," found here:

http://ecatalog.squared.com/techlib/docdetail.cfm?oid=09008926800aa5fc

Home depot sells them for about $50. It does the same thing as the meter treater (both use metal oxide varistors for surges - also known as MOV's). BUT - as others have stated earlier, nothing may protect 100% against lightning. However, these will work well for surges caused by lightning strikes that may occur a mile or two away.