Why It Is Advisable to Have Two Levels of Surge Protection Installed
A power surge is a brief spike in the electrical power supply. These spikes burn the circuits inside appliances. Surges are caused by several factors such as lightning strikes that affect power lines to your home. You can protect your home and electrical appliances by installing two kinds of surge protectors. One is the service entry protector that you can install on the line bringing power to your home. The second kind of protection is installed at the point of use, such as an electrical outlet from which your TV is powered. This article discusses why you should have both kinds of surge protection installed.
Differing Sources of Surges
Service entry surge protection only protects you from surges that originate from outside your home, such as when a transformer blows and creates a surge. This means that your gadgets will be vulnerable to surges that originate from within the home, such as when a short circuit in your dishwasher causes a surge. It is better to prepare for surges from any source by having both kinds of protection for your appliances and fixtures.
Different Magnitudes of Surges
Every surge protector has a maximum capacity of electrical load that it can take. The clearest example of a surge protector is a fuse. When a fuse detects a load that is bigger than it was designed to cope with, it blows and cuts off the power supply to the appliances supplied by that line. Different kinds of surge protectors also have maximum limits that they can let through. In most cases, service-entry surge protectors have higher power limits than point of use surge protectors. This is because the service entry protector controls the power to the entire home while a point of use surge protector controls the power to one or a few appliances. When a surge is of a high magnitude and it originates from outside the home, the service-entry surge protector will reduce that surge to a level that will not overwhelm the point of use surge protector. The two surge protectors deliver better results when they are complementing each other rather than working in isolation.
Not All Fixtures Can Be Protected By In-house Protectors
Some fixtures, such as light bulbs, cannot be easily protected by point of use surge protectors. This is because they do not get their power from outlets like sockets so it is not easy to link them to a specific surge protector inside the home. The service-entry surge protector comes in handy to protect such fixtures.
As the discussion above shows, it is safer to have a two-pronged surge protection mechanism in your home instead of relying on only one form of protection. To have a surge protector installed in your home, contact a company that specializes in residential electrical installations.