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Electrical surges are an inevitable part of homeownership regardless of where you live in the Fox Valley area, but you can have one of the electricians from Black-Haak install whole-home protection. Incidents ranging from storms to random fluctuations in the municipal electrical system can overload and damage appliances and wiring. However, a whole-home system is a robust solution that reduces numerous risks. If you’re wondering whether the investment is necessary, here are twelve reasons to consider adding whole-house surge protection.
1. Reducing Fire Risks
People sometimes favor using surge protector strips that plug into their homes’ wall outlets. While this may afford a bit of protection to devices operating on the strip, it doesn’t protect anything inside the walls. Specifically, it doesn’t protect the home’s wiring system. If a surge melts through even one wire, the fire risk goes up dramatically. Worse, a melted wire could go undetected for years until the right conditions allow a fire to happen. With a whole-house surge protector, you can mitigate this risk significantly.
2. Comprehensive Surge Protection Coverage
Even a high-grade surge protector with an outlet plug only protects the devices plugged into it. Unless you plan to install a truly cumbersome number of surge protectors, there isn’t a way to have protection for every single device and appliance in your house. Modern households have many more vulnerable devices than was the case in the past. A professional electrician can install a whole-home surge protector. After it is in place, you can relax knowing that everything from your TV and fridge to your alarm clock and personal computer will be protected. The professional will install the unit, which is about the size of a shoe box, between your power meter and your home’s electrical system.
Coverage can extend beyond the house, too. Integrating the system is simple if you want protection in a shed or garage not connected to your home. We can even install a system that protects EV charging stations for cars.
3. Increased Surge Capacity
A whole-house system affords you dramatically more capacity than any strip can ever offer. A whole-home setup can handle tens of thousands of amps if you need advanced suppression. Rather than being a sacrificial layer that might stop a surge from a lightning strike or major grid event one time, the whole-home design will have the capacity needed to suppress large surges over multiple events. While some off-the-shelf solutions will tout their capacity, there is no substitute for an integrated system that has the needed capacity to protect an entire house and its contents.
4. Unusual Power Connections
Retail solutions only protect standard systems. That might be fine if you need something that works with the standard 100-to-120-volt outlet. However, not every appliance uses that kind of power or plug. If you own a dryer, electric range, or dishwasher that employs a 240-volt system, you may not find an off-the-shelf option for protecting the appliance. Rather than let your valuable appliances remain vulnerable to surges, you can use whole-house surge protection to cover these less common outlets.
5. Redundancy
Layers of protection will always make a difference. If you already have high-amperage circuit breakers in your electrical panel, a whole-home surge protection system offers another layer. Particularly if you have high-draw appliances in your home, that added layer can make a major difference if a dryer or dishwasher overloads the system. It never hurts to have another layer of protection.
6. Simplicity
An integrated system like a whole home surge protector makes upgrading your living spaces easy. Suppose you want to renovate your basement to convert it into a home theater. You will be making a significant investment in all of the equipment that goes into the home theater, and you’ll want it to have surge protection. You can buy multiple surge protectors for all of the equipment spread across the room. However, the simplest solution is to have a whole-house system already present. When you do the remodeling, you can relax knowing that your new home theater already has all the needed protection.
7. Known Origin and Quality
The typical surge protector in an American home is best described as something that the homeowner bought from the store. It may have originated from a low-cost overseas factory with little to no reliable testing of its surge capacity. Put bluntly, there is no way to know if the surge protector you grabbed from a big box store suppresses anything close to what the packaging advertises.
When our electricians come to your house, they will use whole-home systems from major manufacturers. These are companies that focus on residential solutions, and their systems have undergone years of testing in a range of settings. Our electricians know which systems are high-quality, and you can trust us to recommend them accordingly.
8. Proper Grounding
Plug-in protectors depend on your electrical system to provide the grounding capacity of the strip. While the protector may have a fuse that blows and breaks the circuit in a surge, it isn’t going to direct a significant amount of the surge out of your house. On the other hand, a whole-home surge protector is properly grounded and can direct surges away from your home’s wiring.
9. Higher Home Value
When one of our electricians installs a surge protection system, we provide paperwork attesting to the solution. You will have documentation that the house has lower fire and electrical risks, and you can pass that paperwork to any future homeowners. The knowledge that the house will be safer can raise its long-term value significantly.
10. Lower Insurance Premiums
Many insurers care about a house’s fire and electrical risks. If you can document the presence of a whole-home surge protection system, you can ask your insurance provider for a lower rate. Make sure to consult with your insurer before picking a system so you can be confident that your choice will lower your premiums. Black-Haak can work with you to verify that your house will have the appropriate system.
11. Longer Device and Appliance Lifespans
Continuous surges damage the electrical components of appliances and devices over time. This is becoming more of an issue as homeowners integrate smart technology into their households. Wear and tear from lack of surge protection can affect everything from smart refrigerators to advanced heating and cooling systems.
Fluctuations in electricity can also have an adverse effect on the batteries in devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Batteries suffer damage from surge events, and that can shorten their useful lifetimes.
12. Peace of Mind
Finally, there is the simple peace of mind that comes with knowing that a local and qualified electrician did the work. You will know that they installed a high-quality system. You can sleep easier with the confidence that a robust system is protecting your house’s entire electrical system.
Contact the Professionals
Black-Haak offers a host of electrical services in the Fox Valley region in addition to installing and maintaining whole-house surge protection. We also handle wiring, generators, electrical panels, and outlets. You can also count on us for your heating, cooling, and plumbing needs. Contact us today to schedule an appointment with one of our expert electricians.
