I just picked up a whole house surge protector. It attaches to each of the phases in the breaker box by a 20amp breaker. I picked up a double (dpst) breaker and got to wondering. If a surge happens, I believe it shorts the extra current to ground, would that cause the breaker to trip, or does the whole thing happen faster then the breaker can react?
Second question, since this is a double breaker, if one trips it will trip the other as well, would you see that as a problem? I’m thinking that if there was a surge that affected one of my hot lines, it trips the breaker, now if something where to happen to the other hot line, I’m not protected since the surge protector would be totally off line.
If this was you, would you not worry about it, or would you replace the dpst breaker with two spst breakers?
If you installed it correctly you should be fine the way you have it.
Typically if there is a problem on one line it will show up on both, since they derive their power from the same transformer. You could have short/arcing issues on the load side of the service equipment that could cause line spikes, but those are pretty rare.
Note: Just because you have a whole house surge protector doesn’t mean you should stop using quality surge protection for electronics. Install surge protectors that protect the cable and phone lines as well, either at the point of use or entry to the house or both. Whole house surge is really designed to protect appliances, not delicate electronics, still use a quality strip for your computer and such.
This is just part of what I’m doing. I picked up a Furman Elite15 (Series Mode) to protect my TV/Reciever/etc… and I had a Monster Ginormous (MOV) surge protector on that system that I’m moving down to my computer (which has an old surge protector on it).
The whole house surge protector is for two things, in the even of a surge it’ll take the brunt of the attack and leave the point of use protectors to pick up the rest of it, and it’s also to protect things like my fridge and stove since they are newish and have all kinds of electronics in them. Not to mention that I tend to pick up tech-y appliances so as soon as I replace other things in my house (washing maching, dryer, dishwasher) they will no doubt have electronics in them as well.
I’m just worried that if a surge goes down one leg of the incoming power, I’ll lose protection on the other side as well.
Also, it doesn’t mention it, but should this be up near the top of the breaker panel. No matter where I put it, it will still be electrically the closest item to the panel, so will the extra 12 inches matter, is worth all the extra work to move everything?
I’ve discussed this with other electricians and they all seem to think it would make sense to put this as the top breaker in the panel, but the manufacturers don’t seem to think it changes anything. I can see their point, electricity takes one millionth of a nano-second to travel through 12 inches of bus and by this time the surge protector is already in full swing. Theoretically it doesn’t matter, but I think it gives people a false sense of extra protection by having it near the top of the panel.
Don’t go through the effort.
When reading about this, I’ve twice read that typical install time is two hours. Now, looking at this thing, I see no reason why it should take more then 10 minutes. I wonder if that’s why I’ve read it takes two hours. I can see it taking that long if you have to rearrange the breakers to make room for it at the top. Especially if rearranging means pulling new wires to make them reach farther into the box.
I’ve also wondered if it says two hours so the electrician has a legit way to charge two billable hours for a ten minute project.
As for the thing’s position on the bus - do they factor in panels where the feed and main breaker are at the bottom? Or in the middle? Just put it wherever you’ve got the clear space.
Actually in todays harsh OSHA environment(s) you would have to shut off the main breaker and unless you have a 40+ calorie rated arc-flash suit (because the mains coming in are not protected) gloves, goggles, etc., you’d also need to have the meter pulled so there is absolutely NO power at all in the panel,- line, load or otherwise.
But yes that’s only about a 30 minute job, tops.
Also, you wouldn’t realise how many home’s panels don’t have two consecutive open breaker spaces in them. In that case you’d end up fudging some space by moving circuits around.
Electricity travels about 11 inches in a nanosecond (1 billionth of a second). In “one millionth of a nano-second” (a picosecond) electricity will travel about 1/100,000th of an inch – considerably less than the width of a human hair.
Somewhere I have a ‘nanosecond’ that I got from Grace Hopper – it’s a piece of wire just under a foot long. She used to give them out at her talks, and contrast them with a microsecond – a coil of wire about a quarter-mile (1/3 km) long. Then she would tell us programmers not to waste even a microsecond of computer time, because it adds up. And she would mention in passing how all the science-fiction stories of computers the size of a small moon were foolish – just the time for electricity to travel thru them would have made them very slow.
But I do agree with you that the location of this whole-house surge protector in the breaker box has minimal impact on its’ functioning.