Are Surge Protectors Necessary for Modern Homes?
- Knightly Electrical Services
- May 28
- 3 min read
Updated: May 30
From smart TVs and laptops to HVAC systems and refrigerators, your home is undoubtedly packed with electronic devices. But to ensure all this technology remains in good working condition, you need to protect it.
And there’s one simple but critical (and often overlooked) device that can help you do exactly that. It’s called a whole-house surge protector. We’ll explain what these devices are, the kind of protection they provide, and how easy it is to have one installed below!
What Are Surge Protectors?
From time to time, your home may suffer from voltage spikes. These are essentially incredibly quick and powerful surges of electricity flowing through your home, often caused by things like lightning strikes. These voltage spikes can spell doom for your devices – unless, that is, you have a surge protector.
Surge protectors divert excess electricity away from devices that are connected to them when a power surge strikes. You may have one or more surge protectors in your home right now; they typically look like power strips, except that they’ll be labelled as surge protectors. Some also feature LEDs that indicate when they’re operating correctly.
But here’s the thing: You would probably need a dozen or more of these surge protectors to keep everything in your house protected. You’d need one for your computer, one for all of the things in your home office, one for your coffee maker, one for your bedside phone charger, one for your television, and so on. You’d even need one for your refrigerator, one for your HVAC, and one for your water heater.
This simply isn’t practical for most people. Nobody wants to buy a case of surge protectors and start connecting them to everything in their house.
That’s where whole-home surge protection comes in.
What Are Whole-Home Surge Protectors?
Whole-home or whole-house surge protectors are exactly what they sound like – surge protectors that protect all of the electronics in your home. They provide a much more efficient solution for protecting your devices than using individual surge protectors.
With a single whole-house surge protector connected to your home’s electrical panel, you can avoid the need to add surge protectors throughout your home. You can just plug things straight into the wall, and rest assured that they’re protected.
And in many cases, a whole-home surge protector will save you money and be more affordable than outfitting every outlet in your home with a surge-protected power strip.
What Causes Power Surges?
Lightning strikes are a common cause of power surges, but they’re definitely not the only cause. In fact, several different things can lead to power surges, such as:
Power outages
Grid switching
HVACs, dryers and other large appliances cycling on and off
Utility company maintenance
Faulty wiring in older sections of your home
Utility pole damage
The Need for Surge Protection
Modern homes and electric devices often have an impressive array of features, which leads many homeowners to believe that surge protection may not be necessary anymore. But that’s not the case; in fact, surge protection has never been so important.
A few reasons for this include:
1. Modern electronics are more sensitive than ever. The microchips in modern appliances are easily damaged by small voltage fluctuations. This is especially true of smart home devices, which are especially vulnerable because they are always on.
2. Insurance doesn’t always cover surge damage. Should lightning strike near your home (it doesn’t need to hit your home directly to cause a power surge), you may find yourself having to replace tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of devices. But a whole-house surge protector will protect everything in your house, while costing only a fraction of this.
3. Power surges can cause fires in some cases. While it’s not especially common, fires can start in non-surge-protected homes when voltage spikes cause circuits to overheat. But while somewhat rare, these kinds of electrical fires are always worth avoiding.
Get the Whole-House Surge Protection You Need
In a perfect world, things like lightning strikes and electric grid maintenance wouldn’t threaten all of the electrical devices in your home. But unfortunately, these kinds of things happen from time to time, and they can often have serious (read: expensive) consequences.
Fortunately, by simply having a whole-home surge protector installed, you can keep your devices protected – and you don’t have to worry about protecting each and every device in your house. Contact Knightly Electrical Services today to get started – you’ll be glad you did!
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