Your 317 Home Your 317 Home Magazine Spring 2018 | Page 25

Brad Huff is the President and owner of Mister Quik Home Services. He opened the
business doors in 2000 as an electrical service company. The company evolved and grew
into what it is today, serving customers in HVAC, plumbing, electric, and drain service.
E
veryone knows that you need a refrigerator
to keep your food cold and an oven to help
you cook it. But did you know that a more
important electrical item by far is a surge
protection device? I am not talking about a power
strip that you can purchase at a hardware store for ten
dollars, either! The power strips with surge protection are
great to use as backup, but they’re far from adequate to
protect your electrical equipment from major surges.
Power strips do not provide enough protection for
appliances that consume a lot of electricity, like
refrigerators, window air conditioners, and stoves.
They generally are used for only a few of your electrical
items—often computers and related equipment—leaving
the rest of your equipment prone to surge damage.
People that install only power strips for protection can
wake up to the sudden loss of their TVs, computers,
and other devices caused by one or more electrical
surges that their power strip was unable to handle.
WHAT CAUSES A POWER SURGE?
A power surge can occur when there is a sudden boost
in the electrical charge along the power lines or when a
high-power electrical device, such as an air conditioner or
refrigerator, is turned on within the home. Power surges
can also result from fallen trees or branches, transformer
outages, or lightning strikes, which can be strong enough
to damage all or most of your electrical devices. Since
the equipment in your home is only supposed to carry a
specified amount of current, a surge can easily cause the
device to exceed that amount and shut down—often for
good. The surge protector works by absorbing the excess
energy and dissipating it through the grounding wire in
your home to avoid having it reach your appliances.
Many people don’t realize that your home is affected
by micro-surges regularly just from the nature of the
electricity passing into your home from the electric
company. Electricity does not flow into your home in one
continuous stream but has “noise” that causes minute
variations in the amount of electricity flowing into your
home at a given time. Installation of a surge protector
not only protects you from sudden, large surges but
also from the daily small surges that can degrade your
electric equipment over time and shorten their lifespan.
The damage from large surges and lightning strikes has
multiplied as more and more electronic devices have
become standard fare in most homes. The surges caused
by lightning are the most troublesome, of course, because
of their sheer intensity and ability to cause damage
from up to a mile away, including the instantaneous
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disablement of your appliances, TVs, stereo equipment,
and other electrical products. The replacement and
repair costs for such occurrences can run into many
thousands of dollars, and insurance policies can vary
widely with respect to their coverage for these incidents.
A RANGE OF SURGE PROTECTION OPTIONS
Your Mister Quik service representative can recommend
the best surge protector model to suit your needs and
budget. We offer three levels of protection starting at just a
few hundred dollars, including installation, and financing
options are available. Our surge protectors are the best
on the market, manufactured and warrantied by Eaton
Corporation, a multi-billion dollar corporation that’s been
serving the power management market for over 100 years.
Eaton’s basic model handles the majority of surges but
may not provide adequate protection against extremely
powerful surges, including lightning strikes. The middle-
tier model does provide lightning protection while
the top model covers surges, lightning protection, and
also offers noise filtration capabilities to even out your
home’s electrical current and help your equipment last
longer. All come with warranties of at least five years.
I recently was called to a customer’s home after the
overhead power lines had come into contact with the cable
lines, causing such a large power surge that the gentleman’s
house actually caught on fire. Most surge protectors
wouldn’t be able to handle this powerful a surge, but our
top-line “Optimum” model is so powerful that it can
handle these types of surges as well as lightning strikes.
The actual surge protector is only about six inches
square, taking up minimal room when it is installed
next to your electrical panel. Homeowners can monitor
the green lights on the systems themselves. If your
television stops working, for example, and the light on
the surge protector is sti ll green, it means your outage
is due to another factor—not a power surge. If the
light is out, it indicates that it’s time to give us a call.
The bottom line is that every electrical grid will experience
surges at one time or another. The best protection—
short of unplugging all your devices or rewiring your
home to carry a heavier load—is to install a surge
protector. They are particularly valuable for people that
telecommute from home whose computers hold valuable
or irreplaceable information or for the electronics
hound that has a houseful of power-guzzling devices.
For more information about surge protectors, contact
us at [phone]. We would be happy to schedule
a visit to review possible options for your home.