Saturday, April 10, 2010

Surge protecting your whole house

We just bought new appliances for our house – refrigerator, oven and dishwasher. I found out – accidentally – that many people had to replace their oven after it was “fried” by an electrical surge. It seems that convection ovens, microwaves, dishwashers and refrigerators are very much chip-controlled devices nowadays. Normally, it’s pretty easy to protect your computer or an appliance by the use of an off-the-shelf surge protector. I’m sure we all have one or more at our office and home office. However, I was most concerned about our new convection oven which is hard-wired into 220V. There’s no way to surge protect it with an off-the-shelf surge protector. So, after a little research, we had an electrician install a whole house surge protector (pictured below). He picked one made by the folks at EATON Corporation (Cutler-Hammer) that comes with a $75,000 insurance policy to cover any damages that might occur. Total cost to me, including labor: $350. Is it worth it? I think so. Time will tell but I feel better knowing that we have protected our whole house and we have an insurance policy thrown in for electrical damage.

If you’re anything like me you probably have lots of equipment at home. Maybe you should spend the few dollars for the insurance and piece of mind too.
The CHSP Ultra™ is the most advanced AC surge suppression product to date. Along with the following accessories:
• SurgeTel™ protects four telephone and modem lines.
• SurgeCable™ protects two cable and/or satellite TV lines.
• SurgeEthernet™ provides innovative protection for high speed Internet service. It can be mounted on the sides,top, or bottom of a load center.
chso

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