Whole house surge protection and Inteon compatibility?

[Monk]

I am in step with your thinking, Lou - in that the < 200.00 expense isn't that great for the potential protection / piece of mind. I can install one of these on my own, and might just do that. The Leviton, along with existing in-house surge protectors could save me one day.

In truth, I don't fully understand how these things work.

My best understanding is that they divert surplus power to ground. My understanding of electricity would indicate that since this is wired in parallel with the house, that the diversion of juice would be proportional to the resistance and therefore essentially impossible to divert all of it to ground. To me that means that these only protect you in the event of a relatively modest voltage spike. In the event that the unit shunts those massive joule numbers they spec to ground that you would still get a bunch going to the house, just not as much, meaning that your stuff would just softly fry instead of exploding.

I guess most voltage spikes are modest and very transient so perhaps this setup eliminates 99% of the problem.

The Leviton model wires to two 20 amp breakers so any shunt to ground in excess of 20 amps would pop the fuse and take the Leviton out of the loop. Again, I guess it goes to the fact that spikes are over faster than a breaker can pop.

I do understand that they are self sacrificing, so it only protects you one time. Hence the need for the led to tell you it is dead.

In short, I am not 100% convinced that these things really work. But, for $180 I figured I would go ahead and take it on faith.

 

[Monk]

So - regarding the fact that these type of devices are supposed to be mounted as close as possible to the main load center -

Does this mean - Do not install it in a subpanel 40 feet away - or the other extreme - Install it in the same panel if possible, because even 5 inches matters?

 

[apostolakisl]

So - regarding the fact that these type of devices are supposed to be mounted as close as possible to the main load center -

Does this mean - Do not install it in a subpanel 40 feet away - or the other extreme - Install it in the same panel if possible, because even 5 inches matters?

This leviton model states that one should be placed on each branch panel. So if you have more than one panel, you need more than one of these.

The instructions aren't super clear on distance. The sense that I get is that you should keep your total wire distance to maybe something like 18 inches. They specifically state to leave enough room for the overlapping face plates and not to leave extra coiled up wire around. Following those directions, the shortest possible run would be about 18 inches. (roughly 6in in the panel, 6in between the panel and Leviton, 6 more in inside the leviton.)

 

[Monk]

Thanks Lou.
I went ahead and ordered one of these for one of my 2 panels - Will blog the install w/ some pics.

 

[video321]

So - regarding the fact that these type of devices are supposed to be mounted as close as possible to the main load center -

Does this mean - Do not install it in a subpanel 40 feet away - or the other extreme - Install it in the same panel if possible, because even 5 inches matters?

Yes, every inch of wire does matter because you want to minimize the impedance. The lower the impedance the better the protector can perform. This is part of the reason why PoU protectors don't work as well when used alone.

 

[Monk]

Yes, every inch of wire does matter because you want to minimize the impedance. The lower the impedance the better the protector can perform. This is part of the reason why PoU protectors don't work as well when used alone.

In this case - the wires cannot be much shorter - right? If in this circumstance, every inch really did matter, I might attempt a direct right-or-left install of this device in relation to the can - rather than directly below, as Lou has done. Of course this will involve drilling through the existing 2x4 (not a biggie I don't think) - the cans on both my panels are flush mount. Still - if it requires connection via 2 circuit breakers, the shortest path really might be entry thru the bottom.
Thanks

 

[video321]

I guess it really depends on your panel and protector.

I have a Leviton protector as well (51120-PTC or something like that) and a flush mounted panel. However, I have the neutral/ground bus to the left & right and the branch circuits going pretty low to the bottom of the 40 circuit panel. This allowed me to put the protector on one of the bottom-right knock-outs and locate the 2 breakers on the right side in the bottom-most slots. It was tight, but I didn't need to add any length at all to the ~6" leads and may have been able to trim some if memory serves (I did it ~7 yrs. ago.)

 

[Neurorad]

After doing a lot of reading, I'm convinced that a whole-house unit does a lot more than the point-of-use surge protection devices.

Here's one of the 2 relatively recent extensive AVS threads.

No, I'm pretty sure these are not single-use devices, but they fail after 10-15 years.

A ton of misinformation on surge protection online - most of the published info is from manufacturers.

The equipment in our homes is designed to resist 600V surges.

 

[video321]

After doing a lot of reading, I'm convinced that a whole-house unit does a lot more than the point-of-use surge protection devices.

Very true.
A great portion of it is the quality of, and distance to, a very low impedance earth ground. The further the ground, the less chance the protector has of working; such as the recommendation of keeping the leads to whole-house units as short as possible. If that matters, you know there are issues when you have the protector at the end of 100' of wire on a branch circuit. With that said, I still use PoU protectors on my sensitive equipment to cope with any internal and/or let through voltage surges that come through the whole-house unit.

 

[apostolakisl]

After doing a lot of reading, I'm convinced that a whole-house unit does a lot more than the point-of-use surge protection devices.

Here's one of the 2 relatively recent extensive AVS threads.

No, I'm pretty sure these are not single-use devices, but they fail after 10-15 years.

A ton of misinformation on surge protection online - most of the published info is from manufacturers.

The equipment in our homes is designed to resist 600V surges.

I am sure that different brands do different things, but the Leviton unit is a single surge blocked device. Once it does its thing, the led shuts off and you need a new one.

 

[apostolakisl]

Since you brought this issue up, I re-read the instructions and now am not entirely sure about the self-sacrifice bit. It says, "If during normal operation a diagnostic light shuts off, have a qualified electrician determine if phase power is applied. If power is present, then a transient surge has exceeded the TVSS device's rating. The unit should be replaced and/or upgraded as soon as possible."

I read that to mean that once the device hits it's rated kick-in protection, it self sacrificed, like a diode. But, I admit, they may be referring to the 50ka rating for max protection. I do wonder how it can actually work up to 50ka, however. That seems like it would vaporize the wire. Must be 50ka for like a trillionth of a second.

 

[rusgrafx]

I wanted to make sure that they will not mess with my Insteon signals.

It would be interesting to hear any opinions on the original question. Is there any negative effect of those protectors to Insteon signal?

A while ago I have installed PoU Belkin surge/filter unit in my AV rack and it made dramatic effect on Insteon signal quality (for the better) for the entire house. It blocks any noise generated by AV gear from going back to the powerline. But any Insteon plug-in modules connected on the protected circuit can't get powerline signal at all (unless they are dual-band of course).

So it seems that if the whole-house unit only protects from surges, then it might work just fine, but if it does some kind of power filtering it might create problems with Insteon signal.