Whole house surge protection is good for voltage spikes. Might be handy in a lightning prone area. But it is a simple “crowbar” protector, so named because a 300 volts it shorts out like placing a croar across the line. It is designed to adsorb the surge long enough for the main to trip.
However the smaller power strips are more suitable for tvs and other electronic devices. They often contain inductors in addition to magneticly resist small spikes that would be cost prohibited from being used in whole house systems. These small spikes can “slip through “ whole house units as the crowbar effect is somewhat slow whereas the magnetics resist more the faster the spike.
The third type is for fridges who are sensitive to brownouts. At 90 volts or less they shut off to prevent the compressor from stalling and frying.
All three are necessary.
Whole house is the last to go in. It’s for the physical wiring and if you are in a lightning area that needs it you should also add a lightning rod to the house.
As a side note, if you have the three types of protectors installed your house is virtually EMP proof.
A third type is the protector
I have talked to people where I work and they thought maybe surge protection measures might help my problems. Those I talked to should have been very knowledge but they have not done a thing for their own protection. You have given the best answer. Thanks.
The EMP proofing is what I thought about too. It woulds me an extra protection in case someone like North Korea might want to take out our Boeing facilities. We have a 7000 watt generator and after a EMP attack, I would have a generator to power freezer and refrigerator. I would not be happy if they failed to work because of EMP—not with that side of beef cut and wrapped. By the way, the previous freezer was my wife’s parents’ freezer that was bought in the mid fifties. It was built like a tank. It ran perfectly for fifty years—almost as old as I am. It illustrates how some of those old appliances were a hand-me-down to the next generation. They were heavy and a pig to move. Imagine trying to lift them on a side to squeeze them through a pesky doorway. When I inherited my in-laws’ freezer, I was smart enough to set in in the garage.
Often I do projects in the Whirlpool warehouse. The refrigerators are light enough they stack them four high. My mom’s refrigerator might be too heavy to stack that high. Sometimes a refrigerator goes out to a home and the customer will take it out of the carton. When they do, they find out the refrigerator does not fit into the space they intended or it was white when they intended for a stainless exterior. You won’t believe what happens next. The perfectly good refrigerator is brought back and will not be resold. It will not be given away to a used appliance company. It will be scrapped along with the scratched and dented.
Another thing is many appliances have manufacturing defects. What I do is perform appliance modifications to correct these defects. Things like microwave door switches, temperature sensors and control boards. Most is from off-shore parts that have problems with quality control. The automated fabrication machinery in these parts fabrication factories are poorly designed and go out of adjustment. One day’s run will put in jeopardy thousands of appliances and the defect won’t rear its ugly head until it fails in your home. The warranty costs drive up the costs of these appliances. You will notice the costs of these appliances are going up faster than inflation. You can imagine why.
Our team experienced a stainless steel wash machine drum that had a bad seam weld. These drums would go into spin cycle and literally explode, tearing through the sheet metal side and in-bed into the room wall. They would have to cut the metal apart to get the wash machine out. Our task was to do a laser inspections of hundreds of wash machines to find the defective welds. That process took hundreds of hours of labor. That illustrates how the off shore savings in labor may be offset by the cost of fixing the defects.