Whole house surge protector type ?

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Davebones

Senior Member
Location
North Of Tampa Fl
My brother is getting his panel changed out and asked about a surge protector . Its being changed to a 200 amp panel . He lives below Tampa can someone recommend a surge protector for this ?
 
I've installed several surge protectors that install in the panel as a 2-pole breaker. They have a pigtail lead to terminate on the neutral bar.

If your panel is full of breakers some brands (Siemens and CH) make a surge protector like I described but also is a 30 amp breaker. Take out the breaker for your water heater or dryer and replace it with the surge protector and it also feeds the water heater.

Very convenient.
As codes get more strict about AFCI and gfci, I've been using more dual purpose breakers. When you have a lightning storm and it fries a couple of these expensive breakers the surge protector starts to look less expensive!
 
sw_ross said:
I've installed several surge protectors that install in the panel as a 2-pole breaker. They have a pigtail lead to terminate on the neutral bar.

If your panel is full of breakers some brands (Siemens and CH) make a surge protector like I described but also is a 30 amp breaker. Take out the breaker for your water heater or dryer and replace it with the surge protector and it also feeds the water heater.

Very convenient.
As codes get more strict about AFCI and gfci, I've been using more dual purpose breakers. When you have a lightning storm and it fries a couple of these expensive breakers the surge protector starts to look less expensive!
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IIRC, the installation instructions tell you to select a breaker position that is closest to the neutral/ground bar. For my last house, this was the lower right in the panel, which I think was a CH, but I can't swear to that.
 
The bigger the better.

Some come with a type of "insurance" that pays you (up to $50K) if stuff gets fried. Probably hard to get paid.
 
The CH ones that I installed took up a lot of space! IIRC, I had to remove a couple of the set screws for the neutral bar because it extended far enough to cover the neutral bar and was hitting the set screw heads when I tried to snap it in place!
 
A Duke Engineer by the name of Chuck Jensen used to go to all of my commercial customers' buildings and do a surge survey. He was good. He tested various lightning arrestors in his lab and wrote for the IEEE. He found that if it did not say UL-1449 it was not really a surge suppressor or lightning arrestor. He said that anything with a UL-1449 label was adequate. His personal preference was anything Eaton. FYI, the Delta Lightning Arrestors are junk. He used to fry them all of the time in his lab.
 
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