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Your electricity and electrical appliances are so much a part of
your life, you hardly think about them - until there's trouble. Trouble
comes in the form of power surges caused by such events as lightning
strikes, cars colliding with utility poles, limbs falling on electrical
lines, and demand fluctuations within the home. Any of these occurrences
could send uncontrolled electrical surges into your home's wiring
and damage the appliances and electronic equipment you depend on.
A power surge can come into a home through any wire including antenna
lines, telephone wires and television cable lines. A comprehensive
home power protection program can help |
| eliminate the risk of costly and inconvenient damage
caused by power surges. Whether the disturbance is natural or man-made,
small-scale or catastrophic, today's sophisticated protective systems
can make your equipment more dependable than ever before. Many power-surge
problems in a home can be associated with improper wiring and grounding.
Grounding must adhere to the requirements of manufacturer's local
code, and the National Electrical Code (NEC) - for safety as well
as for proper operation of any surge protection system. Commonly overlooked
problems include improperly grounded main disconnects and circuit
devices. NEC recommends that multiple grounds (such as those at telephone
and CATV service entrances, satellite poles and dishes, metal well
casings, and antenna towers) be bonded together to reference a common
ground. Contact your local building code authority about proper grounding
requirements. To prevent voltage surges from entering your home and
doing damage, a comprehensive home surge protection system adds two
stages of Protective devices to your power connections: a meter adapter,
installed by your electric cooperative outside your home, and plug-in
protection devices which you install inside the home. Together, these
two stages of surge protection help prevent disturbances from outside
and inside the home. |
