Have you ever been to purchase new electronic products for your home and been given a surge diverter for free, or worse off, been asked to pay for it after just spending $5,000.00 on a fridge or TV?
It’s a great deal maker, or a cheeky double dip by the salesman – but the sad reality is, you’re only protecting the item you bought!
What about the rest of your home!? There’s easily over $15,000 worth of electronic equipment in your home that also needs protection from a surge.
What is a Surge:
A voltage spike, or a voltage surge (or just a surge) is a rapid and sudden increase in voltage in the powerlines that supply your neighbourhood, street or home. Voltage spikes can be caused by power supply issues, falling trees, a car accident involving a power pole or even birdlife touching powerlines causing major electrical faults. A usual candidate is also lightning strikes, conveniently when you’re inside using every electrical device you own! See the end of this blog to see what this means for the devices you’re using… not good.
The end result is your grid supply voltage going from the region of 230-250Volts up to several thousand volts. This may last only a nanosecond or slightly more, but the damage is permanent and insanely expensive.
To understand the issue at hand, you need to understand Voltage. In basic terms, voltage is an electricians equivalent to water pressure. Can you imagine your water pressure increasing by 25-50 times the pressure it should be at? When voltage increases (when electrical pressure increases), most electronics can’t handle the increase.
When expensive electronics are exposed to extreme, and sudden voltage spikes, they can blow circuit boards, resistors, complex components and simply stop working. Ceiling fans can emit smoke, TV’s stop working, and laptops endlessly go through ‘start up’ mode. Gaming consoles don’t work, microwaves won’t function properly and heaters blow AC circuit boards. It’s incredibly inconvenient, wildly expensive and isn’t covered by product warranties. To add insult to injury, not all devices are affected. Most commonly, if it’s in use during a surge, it’s gone…
It’s also very common.
Surge Diverters:
This is where a surge diverter comes to the rescue. Whether it’s a plug in model like the image below, or it’s a switchboard mounted, whole house protection unit, they both function in the same way. During an increase in pressure (voltage) the excessive resistance between the Active conductor and the Earthing conductor is overcome…. this creates a momentary “dead short” which causes the circuit to trip, thus protecting the device plugged into the surge diverter.
Now imagine taking this technology and applying it to your entire home… Not just your new fridge.
Whole House Surge Protection:
A skilled electrician such as one of our wonderful crew can install a surge diverter inside your switchboard, and it looks like the image below. This device operates on the same principal as the cheap plug in version, but it protects the whole house!
Voltage Spike creates a surge of electricity pushing 3,000Amps
Surge Diverter excessive resistance is overcome, shorting Active to Earth (at a switchboard level!)
Main Switch to your entire house turns off or ‘trips’ from an overcurrent spanning less than 0.3 seconds.
The end result is, thousands of dollars of electrical equipment has been protected from catastrophic failure.
TIP: If you’re unlucky enough to experience a voltage spike, call us to perform an assessment and write a report for you. You can submit our report to your insurance provider, and claim all your losses on insurance. In rare instances, your supply authority may even cover the costs, but good luck proving it was their fault…
FREE Surge Diverters:
If you’ve read this article this far, you deserve a thank you. If we upgrade your switchboard, ask us for a free surge diverter! If the switchboard is big enough, we can install a surge diverter for you free of charge!
