Total Home Surge Protector

[pete_c]

Morning of the day after.

A bit time consuming and note you have to be comfortable doing this and if not hire an electrician. Saftey first - make sure you have your main breakers off (top of the panel) when working in the panel.

I needed to pass the 4 tails from the TVSS to the fuse panel this morning. It was a bit difficult to do with the 3/4" pipe and two short 90's. I ran two at a time using a 16/2 speaker cable as my fishing wire. I stagged taped two tails and pulled in the panel while pushing from the TVSS box. Its kind of slow going. The next two I did in a similiar fashion only slower.

This part would be much faster with a single straight and short 3/4" interconnection between TVSS (PTX-160) and fuse panel. Noticed that all of the cables are labeled (Black A and B, neutral white and earthground green).

Next steps are to shorten the neutral lead and ground leads. Both of these will going to the grounding / neutral block shown with the white wires in it. While I am in the vicinity will make the wires a bit tighter such that the copper doesn't show. The run from the opening to the neutral block is about 2-3" plus the run inside of the TVSS thru to the fuse panel (about 6" or so).

One "faux pas" was the two 90's. I did not have a choice though.

The following guidelines should be followed when installing conduit between the SPD and electrical panel:
• Avoid using 90° elbows and keep the conduit run as short and straight as possible.
See Figure 2-1.
• If the electrical system utilizes an isolated ground, then the SPD’s housing must be
isolated from ground using insulated conduit fittings.
• When applicable, use weatherproof (corrosion resistant) conduit and fittings to maintain the
enclosure’s NEMA 4 or 4X rating.
• If the SPD enclosure does not already have a hole for installing conduit, punch or drill a hole of
the appropriate size to accommodate the size of conduit being installed.

Connected my neutral and ground keeping the leads as short as possible (will post pics). Difficult because I had to physically place the wires on the grounding bars and then push in a bit with needle nose pliers behind the break loads. Not much room to play with.

Split Phase (1S101)
Important! Do not install SPD if the Neutral to
Ground (Earth) bond is not present as the
SPD may be damaged.
a. Connect the SPD’s Ground (GRN) wire
directly to the electrical panel’s Ground
bus bar.
b. Connect the SPD’s Neutral (WHT) wire
directly to the electrical panel’s Neutral bus
bar.
c. Connect the SPD’s Phase A (BLK) wire
through an overcurrent protective deviceto the electrical
panel’s Phase A voltage bus bar.
d. Repeat Step c to connect the SPD’s
Phase B (BLK) wire to its associated bus bar.

 

[pete_c]

Final installation piece.

I cut the two leads marked phase a and phase b shorter. I moved the double breaker to near the top. I left one picture (top right) show the two phases underneath the breaker. Connected the LV cables and put the cover back on the TVSS. Tuned on the breaker and all is working. Next will be mapping all of the circuts.

 

[pete_c]

Documenting new order / breakers today. Charged up the small walkie talkies. Convinced wife to help me today with this endeavor. Will map out all breakers as I have added numerous circuits (with new home runs to the panel - breakers).

Next - a bit off on a tangent - looking for suggestions.

I've purchased both types wireless receivers (really 2 HAI 45A00-1's and 1 HAI 42A00-2) for the MW - not connected yet. In FL have one connected but not really using it yet. (not sure yet of the placement in the MW but most likely it would be in the attic of the two story home of at least one receiver)

I want to utilize a wireless NO or NC switch for the TVSS surge sensor. A clean install would be to mount it inside of the metal box (not sure though if it'll work) and the other method would be to velcro it outside of the box.

What would be recommended?

 

[wuench]

I had a power engineer (MSEE from UMR/Rolla) describe proper grounding to me when I asked about how to ground my satellite dish. He basically described it this way. Consider electricity as water and a ground rod as a bucket. Electricity will travel the path of least resistance and saturate all potential grounds/fill up the buckets.

The most important thing is to have all your house grounds tied together. Often the electrical and telephone and satellite dish are grounded to separate ground rods or water pipes. If they are separate a surge will fill up one ground then take the path of least resistance to the next, if they are not tied together directly, this path will be into your house and through your equipment, like a satellite receiver, for example burning it out in the process and creating a fire risk. This is often why you will find a modem being damaged in a surge, because it is connected to both your electrical and telephone line which may be grounded separately.

The second most important thing is ground quality. A surge can quickly saturate a ground. The deeper and larger the ground rod, the better quality the soil and the more area around a ground the larger the surge it can handle before it "fills up". Things like house foundations and concrete reduce the ground quality. The more ground rods you have the more volume you have to work with.

The ideal ground system would be to completely surround your house with ground rods, tied together directly with low gauge wire and have all your devices grounded to that system. He designed our data center grounding system which consists of a copper mesh covering the entire floor tied directly to ground rods that penetrate the building's foundation on all sides every few feet.

All of that being said a close or direct lightning strike can easily saturate a grounding system, no matter how well designed. So some damage may still occur.

 

[Neurorad]

just an important note - even though the main breaker may be off, hot wires are still coming into the upper left of the breaker box - keep away from there

...or so I've read

 

[pete_c]

The most important thing is to have all your house grounds tied together. Often the electrical and telephone and satellite dish are grounded to separate ground rods or water pipes. If they are separate a surge will fill up one ground then take the path of least resistance to the next, if they are not tied together directly, this path will be into your house and through your equipment, like a satellite receiver, for example burning it out in the process and creating a fire risk. This is often why you will find a modem being damaged in a surge, because it is connected to both your electrical and telephone line which may be grounded separately.

Currently telco and BB cable are grounded to the ground stake outside of the service entrance (there is also a couple of lighting arrestors there). Inside and adjacent to the fuse panel (more video / amps / etc) are grounded to conduit connected ground straps.

The two grounds (water pipe to neutral) and stake adjacent to the service entrance connect to each other right outside of the fuse panel via the ground straps I have between the conduit (gang boxes) and the coax coming into the house.

Documenting all fuse panel breakers and circuits took a good part of the afternoon. What helped for a short while were a pair of walkie talkies - charged but only lasted about 1 hour or so.

 

[pete_c]

With the new documentation and open fuse panel adding a few more circuits. This morning I added two more 15 AMP circuits in the vicinity of the sump pumps.

Documenting the second floor electric noticed that two bedrooms and the attic space were on one circuit and one bathroom and a bedroom were on another circuit.

Checking conduit coming out of the fuse panel I may be able to run more cable in the existing conduits from the basement to the 2nd floor. So it'll be three more circuits from the basement to the 2nd floor.

 

[IndyMike]

Nice application note from Fluke on methods for measuring and characterizing earth ground impedance.

Fluke Application Note

 

[hult]

[/quote]

Nice application note from Fluke on methods for measuring and characterizing earth ground impedance.
Fluke Application Note

LOL .. Folks wondering whether this article is indeed worth their time to examine may want to take note of the fact that it has garnered 100% of the (two) citations on the topic in this thread. So it *must* be good ;-)

(Same reference as I posted in message number 30 -- 54 posts ago ;-)

... Marc

 

[pete_c]

I noticed a second ground in my panel (MW) after a detailed examination. I gave up on splitting the second floor circuits as there is no more room in the conduit pipe going to the second floor (I would need new conduit from the panel to the second floor).

There appears to be a ground strap connected to the 1.5-2" conduit pipe which connects to the outside service entrance piece of the fuse panel. So it has two grounds (one to the service entrance water pipe and a second to the service entrance conduit pipe)

In FL the home was built (around 2000) elevated one floor (FEMA stuff) so the main floor and living space are cement block and the upper part of the main floor is wood. The builder put a thick metal cable thru one or two cement blocks at main floor level (not sure about ground level) and also attached these cables to the outside two grounding rounds (which went to the fuse panel about 50-75 feet from the service panel). I initially thought that the cable was more for structural support and didn't think at all of its grounding capabilities.

The original house (torn down around 2000) was a ranch home built around 1954 at ground level. (subdivision of 50 homes was built in the 1950's) with this home and the neighbors being built first.

 

[Neurorad]

Don't want to de-rail the thread, but I've found some useful educational pdfs with info on surges. Sorry if they are reposts.

IEEE Guide, 'How To Protect Your House and its Contents from Lightning'

National Institute of Standards and Technology's 'Surges Happen! How to Protect the Appliances in Your Home'

And here is a third, relatively unbiased industry publication
Eaton's Guide to Surge Suppression, Applications Notes

 

[ddennerline]

I purchase PTX-160-1S101 tonight (Ebay) as I have wanting to protect my electronic gear since I lost $2000 worth of equipment several years ago due to lightning. I now have HA and Home Theater, so the potential loss could be much higher. I believe the IT Protector part number handles split-phase power. I don’t believe I have a split phase panel. I suspect I would only have to use one section of the TVSS. I liked the remote alarm form C and the UL 1449v2 certification. Maybe in the future, I could get the power quality monitoring capabilities.

I had several plug-in protectors during the lightning storm and basically they burned out. It seems that plugin protectors did not have enough cushion to withstand the severity of lighting surge. This http://www.mikeholt.com/files/PDF/Lightnin...sion_May051.pdf indicates best practice is to have both a whole house surge protector and plugin protectors. f

Thanks for all the comments in this forum related to TVSS and whole house surge protection.

 

[Neurorad]

All 3 of those guides linked above push a 2-stage surge-protection process, 1 at the service entrance, and the other at the outlet.

Let us know how the install goes, dennerline.

 

[pete_c]

The endeavor educated me a bit about my electrical panel and pushed me to document it.

 

[PhillyTim]

Sorry to resurrect a 2 year old thread--but I thought it might help some to provide an update (I found this discussion very helpful). After reading this thread I really wanted an Eaton PTX-160, however it's simply too expensive. The good news is that Eaton has come out with the "Complete Home Surge Protection Type 2 Devices (CHSPT2 Series)" of surge protectors: http://www.eaton.com/Eaton/ProductsServices/Electrical/ProductsandServices/Residential/SurgeProtectionProducts/CompleteHome/index.htm
I just purchased the CHSPT2ULTRA for just under $150 from the Newegg marketplace. It seems like a reasonable option at a great price point. Hopefully I never find out whether or not it actually works!