[TowerTalk] whole house surge protectors

[WA3GIN]

Whole house protects the big gear like AC compressors, HVAC blowers, for 
sensitive electronic gear like your HDTV, Ham Radio, PC you are required to 
installed end-point surge protectors.

I put all the expensive stuff on UPS which provided further protection, i.e. 
low and high voltage protection as well as spike and surge...

Plenty of good gear available commercially.

Good Luck,
dave
wa3gin

p.s. don't forget protectors for telephone, cable TV, Sat Dish, etc.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Lux" <jimlux at earthlink.net>
To: <WW5L at gte.net>
Cc: "Tower Talk List" <towertalk at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 7:37 PM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] whole house surge protectors


> Tom Anderson wrote:
>> Jim and fellow tower talk members:
>>
>> I'm in the process of having a 220 line run into the shack for a new
>> Alpha 9500 amp my XYL and I picked up at the plant in Boulder a month
>> ago.  Still waiting on the electrician showing up though.
>>
>> While I had him on the phone I asked him (and yes I've known him for
>> years (I was his son's Eagle Scout advisor) and he's done work for me
>> before and does a lot of commercial work near us) about a whole house
>> protector and in his opinion he felt a good individual unit for the
>> plugs and equipment you wanted to protect was better than a whole house
>> protector. He said many strikes, surges, etc. come into the house via
>> phone lines, TV cable, satellite dishes, etc. and often bypass the whole
>> house protector before getting into the home electrical system, which is
>> why he prefers good single unit protectors when needed.
>
> Not to be argumentative, but it would seem that the peer-reviewed
> transient protection literature doesn't agree with the single unit
> protection philosophy.
> (i.e. things that aren't  sales material or field application guidelines
> from one company or another.. but stuff that has been independently
> produced, or at least reviewed by folks without a financial or other
> interest.  Sure, the guys from Erico publish papers on transient
> suppression, and Erico sells products that do this, but the journal's
> pre-publication review process generally makes sure that 2 or 3 other
> folks take a look at it and make sure it's not all bushwa.)
>
>
> Your friend is right that lots of transients come in other ways, which
> is why you need protection on *all* of them, and why everyone is so
> obsessed with all those "bonding" rules.  However, there's a whole raft
> of reasons why protection at the entrance is needed, and preferred, and
> which should be properly coordinated with the downstream protection.
>
> The guidelines for things like safety critical installations (e.g. the
> FAA guidelines and DoD guidelines) all talk about transient protection
> at the service entrance, but make little or no mention of "point of use"
> protection.
>
> Also, a lot of protection devices get a lot of their protection ability
> by absorbing the transient (and getting spectacularly destroyed in the
> process).  I think I'd rather have the spectacular failure out by the
> meter, rather than on some plugstrip behind the desk.
>
>
> Really, the only hazard that point of use protection protects against is
> a transient being induced in your house wiring closer to the equipment
> than to the service entrance, because of the time delays involved.
> (transients from outside, which are MUCH more common, get suppressed at
> the service entrance) Or, if you have something in your house that puts
> big transients on the power wiring (like that 1kW tesla coil you fire up
> in the garage.. been there, done that, cooked my garage door opener and
> a UPS.)
>
>
>  Of course, a decent series mode suppressor (i.e. a LC low pass filter)
> will solve that problem.  Most modern electronic equipment already has
> fairly decent low pass input filters on the AC line connection (to
> prevent signals inside the box from coming out and creating EMI havoc),
> so the sub microsecond transient resulting from that spurious induced
> voltage, and reflecting back from the clamp will get smoothed out by the
> filter to a level that is lower than the damage threshold for your device.
>
>
>
> For folks wanting to spend some time and about $20, get the book by
> Standler on overvoltage protection. (google standler overvoltage and
> you'll probably find it) He's got all the data, the impulse waveforms,
> the theory of what works and what doesn't.  His website also has some
> info.  I can't recall which off hand, but in one place or the other, he
> talks about the UL1449 standards, and the problem with "joule ratings"
> and "clipping voltage".
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