I watch a lot of Holmes on Homes, and everytime they do any electrical work the electrician (the Mario looking one) always installs a whole house Surge protection system.
Apparently they're fairly inexpensive to purchase, but the installation which has to be done by a lisenced electrician is the wallet buster.
Does anyone know anything about these products? I've been trying to do some research and haven't really come up with anything concrete on how well they protect a home.
Most of them offer very large insurance refunds on anything connected anywhere in your home. Albeit don't look nearly as cool as that APC model.
It depends. The ones my dad uses when he builds a house (my house for example) cost around $1000 for the equipment (it is hard to say what the installation cost in this case because when it goes in in a new build, they just put it in as they are putting in the breaker panel, so the billed hours are lumped in with that). The electrician says the cheaper equipment doesn't really work, and honestly, I believe him.
There are some available that are $200. I don't recall the specs on them, but for something that is supposed to protect the whole house, the $200 ones were basically useless. The $1000 ones, on the other hand, had specs that would be expected for a whole house system.
I am a big fan of them. The nice thing about it is that I can plug anything into any outlet (cable notwithstanding) and not ever worry about it getting toasted.
Anyway, I bought an H15s on Saturday because when I am done with college this summer, I am not going to be able to put in a whole house system in my own house for a while.