Question How does a Surge Protector work?

[Neal]

Don't rely on knowing when lightning will occur. You could be away, you could be caught by surprise. If a cheap surge protector at the pedestal can save you a lot of money and hassle consider it. Mother Nature is not predictable.

 

[jmltech]

Thanks all... learned something new. That is what makes this forum so great. Guess my fingers will be walking to Amazon shortly for a pedestal surge protector.

 

[Neal]

Let me say again a nice thing about this progressive surge protector at the pedestal is you can plug it in without your coach being plugged into it and the lights will tell you if the pedestal is wired correctly. Then you can plug in your coach to the surge protector. I don't do this as I leave mine plugged in but do check the lights once the surge protector is plugged in but it is an option to verify the pedestal wiring. I have had a few bad pedestals in my 2-1/2 years so far.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

@Neal makes a couple of excellent points above.

First, if you will be away from the coach for an extended period, unplug it. You never know what might happen while you are not present to deal with the after-effects.

And, the PI surge suppressors provide a wealth of information BEFORE you connect the coach. I, too, have found a number of bad power pedestals over the years and having that information at hand up front prevents a lot of headaches.

TJ

 

[Joe Hogan]

Here in Florida we have several levels of surge protectors on the house. One supplied by FPL, the electrical utility which includes appliance insurance, at the power meter, then inside for each sensitive electronic item. Also attached to the computers are UPS, uninterrupted power source, units to avoid the common power interruptions that turn the power off and on in rapid succession as the line workers or accidents move power sources around.
The last couple of years we have had the power turn off and on in rapid succession, very annoying and potentially damaging to sensitive appliances and electronics.
This has me thinking about installing some sort of buffer, a Tesla power wall or similar, to avoid these spikes. Or moving away from the lightning capital of the world.

 

[Joe Hogan]

Something of interest that most folks do not think about, a surge protector life span is measured in Joules. During the lifespan of a surge protector it will absorb all those spike events that go unnoticed by the user turning the event into heat. Eventually the Joule limit will be reached and the surge protector, hopefully, fail. Note that in the attached article a dumb power strip may end up not protecting at some point. Hopefully our more expensive surge protectors will fail or give some other indication that they are not working correctly.

Why (and When) You Need to Replace Your Surge Protector

Surge protectors aren't like diamonds.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[Gizmo]

When I took the lighting strike it took a hammer and pry bar to get my Progressive unplugged from the pole. There were burn marks on the cord between the pedestal and the progressive and on the case and no visible damage of the cord between progressive and the coach. I did have several circuit breakers tripped in the coach but everything still worked. A couple of months later my Furion Surround sound amp quite working which could be results of the strike.
I have Surge Guard 40100 transfer switch that I thought had surge protection but after chasing down the specs I found that it doesn't. I will be looking for surge protection only for inside the coach and still use the progressive 50 EMS at the pole.