Is it possible to repair a whole house surge suppressor?

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I have yet to see suppressor not intended to be connected to breakers in a service panel.

I also don't like to call these surge, but SPIKE yes. Surges to me a re very slow increases in voltage over the safe limit.

You can usually make local neutrals by connecting ground to a neutral, or make it using an isolation transformer, which makes ground to neutral noise non existent at that point.

greg

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mm wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Totally unnecessary. Call your power company about every other year and file a report that your lights are blinking when the wind blows. They'll send out a service truck to investigate with a guy we don't pay anywhere near enough to risk his life working around the 23KV primary on the pole. Ask him to check your house's connections at the pole for tightness, paying special attention to the NEUTRAL connections, which are the ONLY way your 120VAC can surge up to 240VAC if neutral comes loose and there's a big load on the OTHER phase from the one your computer is on. While he's there, ask him to inspect the grounding on your meter base and verify its lightning gap hasn't been damaged by any hits. It's inside the meter base and he's the only one with a replacement seal to install.

Please consider offering these great lineman a refreshing beverage to say thank you for the free service they provide you. I usually show up with a cold Coke for each of them as they are nesting the bucket and stowing their HV gloves. I'm more of a shock to them than anything the generators can produce....(c;] If it's quitting time when they finish, I move from Coke to a quality beer as they've had a hard shift in the hot sun. Guess who's power gets restored FIRST after the next storm!....(c;]

If your house if FIRMLY attached to the pole transformer, "surges" are virtually impossible UNLESS you get hit by lightning. NO surge protector, no matter how expensive, says anything about LIGHTNING PROTECTOR, ever. That would be a lie. The 23KV primary phase of America's 3 phase Tesla multiphase AC power system is quite stable. The natural magnetic hysteresis of the 60 hz core in your distribution transformer prevents any pulses from being sent to your house until the lightning protector in its primary fuse holder explodes in defeat.

"Surge Protector" is a great sales gimmick. If you want to save your computer, buy it a nice UPS to protect it from LOSING power, especially during disk write operations where you can lose EVERYTHING on that drive.

If you're intent on spending money, please consider replacing your breaker panel breakers on all electrical outlets and appliances with GFI breakers, making it much less possible to kill a child sticking a metal object into America's absurdly designed bladed receptacles designed in

1900. The only way to get shocked after their installation is to get right across the powerline from hot to neutral, which rarely happens to kill anyone. I support GFI installation 100%!

I agree with the GFI protection on all household outlets. Good idea.

As to the "free" service, that is not true. We pay for the service in the distribution fees on the electric bill. So it's the same as "free health care".

As to the service guys getting paid what they deserve, that's between them and the utility. I would offer them a well deserved chilly also.

tm

Sigh.... NO.

Parallel though they may be, they really only protect things that are "beyond" (or very close) to them. Other branches have enough series impedance as far as transients are concerned to deliver on hell of a spike regardless of what a MOV is doing

50-100' of wiring away

Jeff

No, it isn't. You can get nuisance trips on refrigerators and freezers. They have grounded cords and they don't need GFCI. I haven't seen a new copy of the NEC lately, but I was told it is against code in the US to use a GFCI to power either.

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You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

So don't use them on either. They are usually blocked for child access anyway.

tm

A GFCI won't protect a kid from sticking something into an outlet and killing themselves if they are across line & neutral.

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You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

A young child will usually not be dexterous enough to simultaneously stick a bare metal object into both line and neutral. Even if they do, the main current path will not be through the chest. They most likely stick a metal object into the line terminal while sitting on the floor and get the current through the body. The GFI device will trip under those conditions doing exactly what they were designed for.

But it's really your choice how safe you want the environment for your young kids.

But you know this and are only looking for a pissing contest.

tm

That doesn't stop them from chewing on a cord, or getting hold of a lamp they knocked off a table.

Um, no.

If anyone is pissing, it's you. Most outlets are no where near a ground path other than the ground terminal in that outlet. Ones in a kitchen, bathroom or outdoors should have GFCI protection. That's what the US electrical code calls for. It can either be built into an outlet for around $10, or into a circut braker for $25 or more. A GFCI outlet can protect regualr outlets that are down stream from it. There is no reason for whole house GFCI. In the US, with split phase 120/240, it would require a pair of sensors, and trip up to 200 amps. Only a madman would require that when a single circuit can be protected for lower cost and with a higher level of safety. In fact, lights and outlets in a room should be on seperate circuits so you aren't left in the dark if something takes out the outlet circuit.

Keep pissing if you want to. I deal in facts, not fantasy.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in news:w56dnXFlDNzhydrQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

haven't

So, you're saying it's ok if the motor windings are leaking to, or worse, connected to the chassis of the fridge as long as it's grounded? That's the only thing that makes the GFCI trip....about 10ma of something's wrong.

Back in the 1980's, I submitted a Navy Beneficial Suggestion that GFCIs be installed at all electronic benches in our calibration and test equipment repair facilities after an apprentice technician nearly killed herself pulling a TV-7 tube tester out of its case, inadvertently not unplugging it. The TV-7 has a big rheostat right close to the case on the bottom (sitting up) with exposed windings where the slidewire contact is. She really got burned as she was also touching exposed, highly grounded metal parts of her workbench (another benny sugg submission). Months went by and Navy accepted my suggestion system wide, not just in our shop, handing me a very nice check for both suggestions.

We had some equipment that tripped the GFCI every time, frustrating the hell out of the bench techs who blamed me. 3 benches, themselves, tripped out every time it was reset.

Leaking line filters in every case, and the Navy loves line filters, were the problem. Once the leaking line filters were replaced, making the equipment SAFE should the ground connection become open, the problem disappeared. Equipment in the shipyard became safer to operate because of it. Some metal cased test equipment no longer "bit" its user with low AC voltages on its grounded case, something we never figured out. It must have been miswired grounds in the ships crazy balanced 115VAC line systems. GFCIs fixed it because they instantly detected faulty line filters, transformers with windings touching the frames or miswired equipment that had been used for years.

None of my GFCIs on any appliances trips, except during major thunderstorms. If they do trip, there's a reason....leaky appliances. One hot water tank ago, there was a heater coil shorted to its metal calrod sleeve quite near the balance point of the 240VAC line. This ground fault only shorted out around 12% of the element's resistor so the element just ran hot in one place, but cold in another from the imbalanced load shooting high current through the little ground wire. The GFCI found this short as soon as it happened, eliminating a potential electrical fire hazard if the current had overrun the flimsy ground wire.

I think many electrical fires could be stopped if GFCI were required on all circuits....including faulty appliances that trip them.

"tm" wrote in news:ii85p0$4ae$1 @speranza.aioe.org:

...rationalizing NOT spending the money for GFCIs.....

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in news:FuCdnUpmjq7LA9rQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

The 7ma current-to-ground trips the GFCI every time under your stretching scenario for the pissing contest. Yes, the kid would get an instantaneous shock in the millisecond range, to no harm, but there's plenty of leakage from hot to ground to trip the GFCI if he bites into a wire, even if he's across the neutral. I've heard this BS rationalization before trying to save money because they are expensive. But, we tested it. We took an old metal 2-wire Porter-Cable electric drill and ran a bright yellow wire from hot to the case of it....creating the electrical fault. If you stayed totally insulated from ground, the drill would run, but that damned GFCI was uncanny finding you out. Body leakage to the air Xc would even trip it. If you stood in your sneakers (insulated!) and touched the hot drill case, the GFCI tripped from the capacitor your foot made with the concrete under the insulated sole. If you started by touching NEUTRAL, THEN touching the hot drill motor, the trip was instantaneous, and you barely could feel the shock DIRECTLY ACROSS THE AC LINE before the GFCI tripped. Your idiot rationalization with the little kid across the line wouldn't wash....especially if he was sitting on a floor, even a wooden one with a vinyl top. (Click), dead circuit, live kid.

Here in Israel they are required by the electric company BEFORE main breakers.

You can't get a new connection without one, and every few years there is an advertising campaign to get people to install them in old homes.

We have 230 volt single phase service, and 230 volt 3 phase split into three separate circuits, so we don't have the 120/240 problem in the US that was previously discussed.

Geoff.

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Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

I did a brief web search and was surprised that as many as 500 children (?) a year in the US are electrocuted. Before the GFIs were required in wet areas by code, it was over 800 per year.

tm

"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@cable.mendelson.com:

Sorry, Geoff. It's not your fault, but I cannot forget my 3 friends who died....ever.

It was no accident. By the luck of the draw, I wasn't one of the dead.

To quote the website:

"the Johnson administration never sought the prosecution of the guilty parties or otherwise attempted to seek justice for the victims. They concealed and altered evidence in their effort to downplay the attack. Though they never formally accepted the Israeli explanation that it was an accident, they never pressed for a full investigation either. They simply allowed those responsible literally to get away with murder."

Israel is a democracy, and has a very active High Court of Justice. The concept of people suing the state for compensation is very much alive here.

Although it is over fourty years, and it might be impossible to find anyone who was in charge that can testify, you might want to consider, as a group, filing a law suit against the IDF for compensation and information.

Geoff.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

order:

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another

A surge is defined (IEEE) as a "subcycle disturbance"

A "swell" is a disturbance that lasts from 1/2 cycle to a few seconds.

Longer is "temporary overvoltage".

A "spike" is essentially the same as "surge".

Not obvious to me what you are saying, but in the US connections between ground and neutral downstream from the service not allowed (some specific exceptions).

"You" don't have to get hit. Strikes to power lines can cause damaging surges into a building. So can close strikes. Surges can also enter on cable and phone wires. And there are other sources of damaging surges.

The surge guru at the NIST looked at essentially a worst case event - a

100,000A lightning strike to the high voltage wire on a utility pole (with transformer) behind a house with typical urban overhead distribution. There are multiple paths to earth. The surge to the house was 10,000A max for each service wire to the house. Service panel suppressors are readily available with higher ratings. The probability of a worse strike is close to zero.

You can protect from very close lightning strikes.

Lightning strikes to a building, of course, require lightning rods.

Doesn't need the transformer. In the example above, a utility lightning arrestor (installed on all the distribution transformers around here) dumps the strike to earth via the grounding electrode on the pole. Since the resistance to earth of that electrode is a few ohms at best, the "ground potential" at the pole rises thousands of volts above "absolute earth potential", and more particularly, above the earth potential at the house. Since the secondary neutrals are connected to the "ground" at the pole, this causes a large surge on the neutral to the house. A significant portion of that surge is transferred to the hot wires by inductive and capacitive coupling.

Usually the next worst to lightning for surges are normal and abnormal utility operations. Potentially one of the worst of these is switching of power factor correction capacitors. Utility produced surges can also get into a building and cause damage to equipment.

It is a "gimmick" use by the IEEE in an excellent guide on surges and surge protection at:

And by the US-NIST in a surge guide at.

This one is less technical and aimed at the unwashed masses.

Both say surges from lightning and other sources are a problem and you can protect against them. ===============

In something that hasn't come up in this thread - the NIST guide, using US insurance information as one source, suggests that high voltage between power and cable/telephone/.... wires causes much of the damage, not just a surge reaching equipment through the power wires. The IEEE surge guide has an example of such damage starting pdf page 40.

To protect from high voltage between power and phone/cable wires, the ground wire from the entrance protector for both phone and cable has to be short and connect to the power earthing system near the power service. If wires are too long, surges coming in on phone or cable wiring can produce high voltage between those wires and power wires. That is what is shown in the IEEE guide example starting pdf page 40. With a large surge, the building ground can rise thousands of volts above "absolute earth potential". Much of the protection is that power and phone and cable wires rise together.

Particularly for expensive equipment with power and phone/cable connection a plug-in suppressor may be useful. All interconnected equipment needs to be connected to the same suppressor, and all external wires - phone/cable/... - need to go through the suppressor. The voltage on all wires is clamped to the ground at the suppressor. (This is also in the example in the IEEE guide starting pdf page 40.)

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bud--

It was never against the code to use GFCIs on refrigeration.

But the NEC used to have exceptions for GFCI requirements in garages and basements where a refrigerator/freezer would be plugged in. Those exceptions are gone.

Plug-in refrigerators/freezers using 15/20A 120V receptacles in commercial kitchens are required to be on GFCI protected receptacles.

The UL allowed leakage for refrigerators/freezers is about 0.5mA. Tripping a GFCI means the appliance has a problem.

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bud--