Surges Happen! How to Protect the Appliances in Your

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Check list

Before you decide which way you want to protect your appliances, there are other points to consider -perhaps this is a good time to make a check list. We have already mentioned the variation in lightning activity across the country: Florida is known for very high lightning activity, the West Coast for much lower (but not zero) activity. For a given area of the country, the type of your dwelling, and what kind of appliances are to be protected will influence which type of surge protectors you will be looking for.

Where do you live?

This is an important question because the type of dwelling has some effect on how severe your surge problem might be. In a somewhat simplified way, consider three categories according to the arrangement of the utilities:

Detached house with power and telephone and/or cable TV drops at opposite ends of the house -the worst possible arrangement of all. But do not fret, there is a way of compensating, even after the fact, for this unfortunate situation, as we will see. Detached house with all services (power, cable TV, phone) entering on the same side of the house. You can improve that situation further, as shown at the end of this booklet. Townhouse or apartment building with services entering the building at one point and fanned out to the different dwellings - about the same as the case of the detached house with all services on the same side.

The first of these three arrangements has often been found to be made worse by a violation (not intentional) of the prescriptions of the National Electrical Code that require that the two incoming services be properly bonded by a grounding conductor. Without going into fine details, the problem arises because typically the power company and the communications utilities do their own thing without enough coordination. Statistics of insurance companies show that one of the most frequent damage claims is for video equipment. A possible explanation is the uncoordinated grounding of the service connections by one of the utilities.

What appliances are you using?

From the surge protection point of view, there are four kinds of appliances, with examples listed below by order of increasing sensitivity to surges, either because of their nature or because of their exposure: .

• Motor-driven and heating appliances
  Washers (dish and clothes), food processors, power tools, heating and ventilation motors, pumps, etc.
  Water heaters, space heaters, toasters, incandescent light bulbs

• Free-standing electronic appliances
  Computers without modem, table radios, TV sets with rabbit ears Compact fluorescent and modern tube-type fluorescent lamps .

• Communications-connected appliances
  Computers with modem, TV with cable or satellite antenna Fax machines, telephone answering/recording machines .

• Signal systems
  Intruder alarms, garage-door openers, sprinklers, intercom

Let's then take a quick look at each of these and see which might need some form of surge protection.

Motor-driven appliances and heating appliances

For each of these two categories, there can be two or more kinds, depending on the type of control used.

• Mechanical control (ON-OFF switch, rotary control, etc.), no sophisticated key pad or other electronic control
• Electronic control (programmable operation, key pad, display, etc.)

Appliances with mechanical controls are generally insensitive to surges and can be expected to withstand the typical surges that occur in a residence. Extreme cases, such as a direct lightning strike to the building, or one to the utility, very close, might cause damage.

Appliances with electronic controls can be more susceptible to damage than those with mechanical controls. Less traumatic but annoying can be upset memory in programmable appliances, although progress is being made in providing more built-in protection.

Another difference to be noted is that of appliances permanently connected, as opposed to those in intermittent use. The risk of a damaging surge happening at the time of intermittent use is much smaller than that of an appliance which is on all the time.

Decisions, decisions

What kind of appliances?

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