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Electric Panel Surge protection

So, initially, I was thinking of getting a Puritan PSM156 which handles surge protection. 

However, ever since, I had an issue with some surges at home (garage panel died as an example), I had spoken to my electrican (friend of the family) and he suggested to surge protect my whole panel/home. 

I was suggested to get this model from my audio store, might be overkill? TPD TK-TTLP-1S240-FL , comes with a lifetime warranty. 

My question first is, how many of you surge protect your whole panel and does this really then make it worry free for my audio equipment? and only need to get a power conditioner after that doesn't have surge protection?

Once I can get some feedback on this, then I can move onto looking at models to get after. 

skads_187
erik_squires
17,544 posts
 

BTW,  the patents on series mode protection expired a while ago and Furman among others now incorporates them into their designs.  Looking at the only 3rd party tests I know of, from Wired, the latest Furman and Tripp Lite models outperform Brickwall and ZeroSurge and also add nice additional features. 

erik_squires
17,544 posts
 

Not exactly directly related, but I just spent $1,000 to find out that my air handler (the thing that moves air in my vents) uses a computer controlled blower motor, which is much more vulnerable to electric surges than your old school AC motor.  It is this kind of computerization of every appliance that makes whole house units more necessary. 

knittersspouse's avatar
knittersspouse
42 posts
 

Not all surges are from lightning.  I've mentioned it before, but I had a customer situation where only room-local protection was in place.  A number of system-specific UPS's gave up magic smoke when a storm-tossed tree limb dropped a 4160V line on the 120/240 V areial lines below it and fed the 4160 into a bunch of local buildings.  Odds may be lower, but the same can happen when a car takes out a pole on an otherwise quiet sunny day.  Public Utility power is usually pretty good, but is seldom perfect, even if your service drop to the house is underground like mine, and I still use both panel and in-room protection.  

davidchampa's avatar
davidchampa
24 posts
 

Some years ago the house adjacent to mine was struck by lightening and fortunately I had a whole house surge protector on my panel. The induction from the strike carbonized the surge protector but spared most of the electronics, some of which were plugged into their own line-level surge protection strips (I lost a few things, which I don't recall, but they were incidental). So, yes, I currently have a Siemens Boltshield FSPD14 whole house surge protector as well as individual protection units on sensitive electronics, including a Furman ELITE20 PF i on my main rig and a Brick Wall surge protector on my office system.

skillet
5 posts
 

A couple others have mentioned ZeroSurge and I'd agree.  They're a small company based in NJ that makes high quality panel and other surge protectors right here in the USA.  

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