18 Best Whole House Surge Protector (2023 Updated)

Frankly it is a device with no controls or interaction required. Your electrician installs it and with luck it just does what it is designed to do, stop spikes from entering your home electrical suppressor! It obviously gets a positive review until the day it gets hit and let’s a damaging spike through.

It could even be installed by a home owner if they are handy and they follow directions and basic safety protocols. I am not recommending that any strongly advise that you have a licensed electrician do the job though.

This product is like buying insurance. We purchased one for our last house because we often would have power outages and surgs. While this surg protector won’t help with power outages or brown outs it can remove much of the danger of a power surg when the power is returned or a lightning strike.

Properly placed in the main curciuit breaker box it will shunt an overvoltage to ground and trip the main circuit breaker protecting all the devices in the house. When that happens you must only reset the main circuit breaker to restore power.

The power rating of this device is high enough that it normaly will not be damaged before the main circuit breaker opens. Our last one was still working fine when we moved after 20 years.

This is the cheapest way to try and protect your electronics and appliances in the home. Do I know it works? Nope, but I have confidence I am better protected with it than without it. Will it protect from a direct lightning strike? Heck no, are you silly? However it will protect from all the surges that come from your power company.

This is the second one I have installed as I just moved into a new home. This is an improved version so they say. Never had any surge damage before amd hopefully won’t now. The flush mount kits were out of stock so I improvised.

Installed the unit inside the panel and provided a view window for the led indicator. Used a plastic yellow lens to cover the hole. If the kit were in stock it was close to $45. 00 which is allot for a mounting plate.

I used a simpson 3×7 tie plate to mount inside the panel.

Over the last couple or three years, I have had a WI FI card and one , possibly two PCs rendered inoperable, through lightning strikes. Ordinary plug-in surge protects are not enough without strong protection between the house and the mains grid.

This device carries a very substantial warranty, and has a current protection rating of 80,000 amps. While the warranty might or might not provide cover outside of the US, this doesn’t worry me – as I think that the makers of this device have a lot of confidence in their product to offer 5 year / $75,000 cover.

Bear in mind that in this country (Australia), as probably in most places, an Electrician is required to fit the device, although clear instructions and basic wiring diagrams for both 240V single phase and 440V three phase installation are provided.

My dwelling is a steel framed transportable, with steel footings into the ground; this acts a bit like a Faraday cage, when lightning strikes the house. the scorch marks and little areas of molten galvanizing on the iron roof cladding are clear evidence of a direct strike! The “Faraday cage” house frame is safe protection – but using any water plumbing fittings or land line telephones should be seriously avoided during a storm.

I recently installed this item in my house. I am a DIYer. The amount of time that the power was off was less than 15 minutes and it went right into a double pole 30 amp breaker that I had to pick up at the local Box Store.

I would recommend this to anybody that needs whole house surge protection type 2 as well as using the power strips that are surge protectors at the actual Electronics or equipment.

The surge protector is easy to install on the pool control box, using pre-existing enclosure punch outs. The leads are heavy duty and long enough to make it to the breakers that I installed. When you turn the power back on, the green LED pilot light tells you that it’s ready.

This is a quality unit. Spend the money. Be sure to turn off the power before wiring anything!.

I purchased this for my variable speed pool pump. I reside in central Florida and my house has been struck by lighting twice in two years. Both times the pool pump has fried. Now that I have this device installed, my house probably will not get hit by lighting again but I am ok with ***.

having this device as an insurance policy. I wish I had this device installed earlier. It could have save me thousands of dollars in new pool pumps.

Excellent product!!! Protected my pool equipment many times now from surges and still works. Light is still green!!! I will buy this surge protector again.

This surge protector was about 5 inches bigger than I expected. But I’m still pleased with it!

Had this Surge Protector for over 3 years and it’s been through a couple outages where the lights would flicker in the room first meaning a surge occurred. My computer connected was never harmed so it obviously works.

Great surge protector for someone on a budget with basic needs.

I put the surge protector on my laptop that I have in the back room. It was hard for me to plug and unplug from the wall and I got this so I wouldn’t have to. I also like it that you can cover the plugs you don’t use.

Very happy with it.

Pros: – Well respected brand name – Limited lifetime warranty – Some impressive specs: o Covers all 4 modes of protection: L-N / L-G / L-L / N-G o Max surge current capacity, per phase: 108kA o Short circuit current rating: 22kA o Max Continuous Operating Voltage (MCOV): L-N: 150V / L-G: 150V / L-L: 300V o Voltage Protective Rating (VPR) or clamping voltage: L-N: 600V / L-G: 600V / L-L: 1000V / N-G: 800V – Relatively easy to install (but please see warning below) Cons: – A 50A circuit breaker (matching your electrical panel) is required, and must be purchased separately.

Note1: – Has a $75K Connected Equipment Warranty, but after more reading, it appears that most of these warranties (but I don’t know if it applies specifically to Eaton/Cutler-Hammer) have huge loop-holes, where claims may be difficult to collect.

Hence, I don’t recommend using this in your decision-making. – Recommended by Mike Holmes so it must good, right? Umm, not necessarily … so again, not a factor in my decision-making. Accessing your electrical panel is a serious matter, so please heed the following warning: *** Electrical current from your panel can cause serious injury or even death.

If you are unfamiliar with electrical safety, or are not comfortable opening up your electrical panel, PLEASE hire a licensed electrician to do the work. *** Review: Recently, while researching some new power bars with surge protection, it suddenly dawned on me that I have numerous other electronic devices that I do not have surge protection for, such as the furnace, thermostat, hot water heater, central A/C, refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, washer & dryer, microwave, cordless phones, garage door-openers etc.

The more I think of it the longer it got – coffee-maker, IP cam, WiFi switches & plugs, and even LED bulbs (yes, there are tiny circuit boards inside each bulb)! Then I read about whole-home surge protectors & thought, THIS was what I needed! As I researched it more, I realized that to have for full protection from transient current & voltage spikes, the surge protection should be cascaded, from Type1 (protection starting from outside the house), to Type2 (internal wiring), to Type 3 (at point of use, e.

g. power bars with surge protection). Whole-home surge protectors are typically classified as Type2, and while it is not exactly all encompassing protection (as the name might suggest), I believe it should significantly reduce the risk of damage from internal current surges.

After reading a few reviews, I decided to give the Eaton CHSPT2Ultra (Type2 Surge Protection Device) a try since it has some good online reviews, and its specs are quite impressive. I am familiar with electrical safety (although by no means an expert) but I do know what precautions to take to make sure I don’t put my own safety at risk.

Again I have to stress that if you are not comfortable installing this, please get a licensed electrician to do it. So, after carefully installing the unit, I flipped the main power & breaker, and the 2 LEDs lit up! Everything was good! While I cannot prove (or test) that the surge protector is actually protecting up to its specs, at least the Eaton (Cutler-Hammer) brand is well respected, and that makes me feel more at ease knowing that there is now an extra layer of protection in place, as opposed to no protection at all.

Rating: 9/10 but since I cannot give 1/2 stars, I have rounded it up to 5 stars.

This seems like an excellent product. I have yet to experience an outage after installation so it has yet to prove its effectiveness. Seems to be a well designed product. Installation was very easy and I was actually able to install the unit inside the breaker switch cabinet and have a clear view of the unit by simply opening the cabinet door.

ALWAYS SHUT OFF POWER TO ENTIRE HOUSE AT MAIN SWITCH DURING INSTALLATION. Need to purchase a two pole 50 ampere breaker for installation. This breaker is specific to your panel. That is if the panel is GE, you must buy a GE breaker.

If Eaton, Eaton, etc. You may need to relocate existing breakers to accommodate the new breaker. Professional install advised if you are not adept at this sort of DIY jobs.

I’m giving the ultra 5 stars because I’ve installed around 15 of these in the last 3 years and they seem to be doing what they are designed to do. But that’s the thing with surge protectors. You never know.

It is rated at 108,000 amps making it considered to have a degree of lightining protection. NOTHING on the market will protect you from a direct lighting strike. This is designed for surges through utility lines and some lightning protection through the earth but not direct.

One thing is certain, to have nothing equals nothing. Very easy to install. Forget warranties. If it gets fried and your electronics are still ok, it did its job and gave up the ghost. If its fried along with your electronics, then know that the strike was over its limitations.

*Turn off the circuit breaker to the unit if you ever use a portable generator during a power outage. Generators are brutal on surge protectors as well as any other electronics because of the voltage fluctuations.

Just screw the white wire to your neutral bus bar, green wire to the ground bus bar, and finally red and black wires to a 50 Amp breaker. Do as the manual say and install it close to the top, DO NOT EXTEND the cables.

Since the “Flushmount Kit” for this device is being sold for $30 I decided to make my own, went to a laser engraving shop, and asked to cut a 3mm piece of MDF. You can choose acrylic or if their machine is powerful even aluminum or metal.

I just installed it today so this review 4/5 is based on how easy is to install and how cheap compared to what it offers. This is working as a second layer of surge protection in my house.

Why so difficult? The leads are quite short. I planned to mount the unit through a punchout in the bottom of the panel. I quickly realized the leads would not reach without extending them. However, there was plenty of room inside the panel.

I mounted it at the top beside the main breaker. Even at that, it was s stretch for the white wire to reach the Neutral bar. I also had to move a neutral wire down one screw to make the top connection available.

Drilling the holes for the screws through the main panel was not easy. The panel is made of a very hard steel. To be sure the screws secured tightly, I drilled smaller holes and kept enlarging them until I got just the right size.

I had also planned in piggybacking to the range breaker. Once I pulled the breaker, I discovered very heavy gauge wire connected and sealed with dielectric grease. Rather than mess with that I ran to Ace and bought a 50 amp breaker, which would be to code anyway.

Then as I was reassembling the panel, I realized there would be no way to monitor the LED’s without removing the panel cover. I had to carefully measure and drill two holes in the cover that lined up with the LED’s.

The old measure twice thing did not come into play here because the cover shifts position once installed. I ended up drilling FOUR holes and covering two with duct tape. Not electrical tape? No, because the electrical tape is black, and does not match the panel.

Well, that and, I’m a guy. Guys use duct tape. It’s a guy thing, you wouldn’t understand. So that’s a total of eight holes drilled through hardened steel, and a few of those were drilled three times to get the right size without stripping.

Wiring the unit was very quick and easy and had the leads been long enough, mounting would have been just as easy. It was mounting the unit that was so time and labor intensive. Now that it’s done though, I am very pleased with the installation, as is my wife because nothing is visible from the outside when the panel door is closed.

As for the function of the device, I have seen the internal components. The MOV’s are extremely beefy! I can’t imagine typical surges or spikes ever damaging this thing. I would expect it to work forever unless we get hit by lightning.

And that’s the biggest reason for it. Should that happen, we’ll have more to worry about. But I imagine between this unit and plug-in surge suppressors inside, our electronics should survive. Let’s not test that theory, but this device is insurance.

Also, normal daily surges and spikes do not necessarily damage equipment but their effect is cumulative. Eventually, the electronics will fail. This device, in combination with the normal surge suppressors, should extend the life of my equipment.

This is definitely something NO home should be without! Why are these not required by code?.

This is the kind of product you will never know for sure whether it’s working or not unless you get an electrical surge and the only thing that shows any effect is the HEPD80 itself. It has two indicator lights to show that it is working.

If one or both lights goes off then you probably had a surge. If nothing else in the house was effected, then it probably worked. I installed it because I did have a large surge earlier this year and it damaged numerous pieces of equipment in the house.

This unit has very good specifications. It’s sort of a form of insurance against electrical damage. Square D is a very good name in electrical products.

Whole house surge protection is especially important to protect sensitive and expensive electronics. The GE THQLSURGE protector readily fits into a GE PowerMark circuit breaker panel using only 2 full breaker spaces and one ground connection.

Prior to using the GE THQLSURGE product, I have lost electronics due to surge conditions twice in 45 years in my home. Given these events, I feel that whole house surge protection provides low-cost insurance and should be a requirement especially in rural areas.

I have a GE breaker boxe and wanted whole home protection. This is fairly easy to install and the light on it shows you it’s working. If the light goes out, then this device protected you from a surge and you need to replace it.

This doesn’t replace surge protectors for electronics throughout your house, but it does help reduce electrical surge damage. It also helps protect 220v appliances, which don’t have surge protectors.

Easy to install, if you know what you are doing. It seems to be doing what it was designed to do, only time will tell. If you’re not an electrician or have knowledge working with electricity don’t do this yourself.

A great value and a great replacement for my oldrer 2P175 Surge Protectoirs which I can NO longer locate.

My rating is on good faith that the product will do as it claims to do when the need presents itself.

I like SQ D surge suppressors. These units always work well for your home, and small businesses.

This surge protector is essential for these “modern” HVAC system circuit boards, transformers, etc. that get fried with every surge. This saves money and stress.

I installed this SPD in the switch box on the outside of the furnace. It was very easy to install.

Used on a new furnace installation. On seer16 & above, installing surge protectors & variable speed furances.

I purchased the Enbrighten 7-Outlet 3ft. WiFi Smart surge protector because of the features. No where on the box did it say that the three controlled outlets were all controlled simultaneously rather than individually.

I could have lived with that. When I tried to use the device it was dead, did not connect power to any of the always-on plugs. I returned it to the store where it was purchased and exchanged it for another identical one.

It too is dead. Nothing happens when the power button is depressed, no lights come on, so power is transmitted to the outlets. I have been enlightened about enbrighten, and will avoid their products in the future.

The Enbrighten Wi-Fi Outdoor Yard Stake (6 grounded outlets) is one of the most used items at our home – we love it! Initially, I used it to control our bug light and then added a security spotlight, & lights for the grill and pool areas.

It’s very versatile and has really helped create a great outdoor space. The directions for set up were very easy and the app is user friendly. I have it scheduled to turn on at dusk and off at dawn which gives me one less thing to think about.

It’s easily controlled via the app, my wife added the app to her phone as well so she too has full control, and it works seamlessly with Alexa. When we hear a noise outside we turn if off/on to indicate that we know something may be in the area.

The entire unit is well made & durable with a strong stake. Overall, five stars for sure.

I am surprised that I am so impressed with an outlet strip! Getting this strip was timely as I am installing Christmas lights. I am able to plug in multiple items (6 outlets) and have the ability to control them all with a phone app! I have outdoor wreaths and small lighted porch trees that I like to turn off around 11pm.

This outlet strip really is an excellent solution to doing it all at one – from inside – and on a timer. The quality of the Enbrighten yard state is also excellent. The product is sturdy and I feel it will stand up to years of use.

One caveat is that mine is in a somewhat weather-protected area so I expect it may fare better over time. Overall I highly recommend this product – in fact, I’m getting a few matching outlets that are compatible with the app!.

We have bought this one because an old one burned and meld one contact when we connected a hair straightener. We like the color white because the former black one was to dark for our living room. This one is very long, so we can use it in any place.

800 joules is a nice level of protection for our apartment.

I purchased this surge protector to complete my additional desktop PC. The price was right. It has multiple outlets with a on-off red switch to indicate it’s working and a 10 foot cord. It is a good name brand.

All in all, nothing is left out and it has all the required features needed to protect our equipment from the power outages we have been experiencing. This was a good deal in my opinion.

Picked this surge protector up at Lowes a few days ago. Very easy install and the protector can be mounted directly on the electrical panel (Square D in my case) using the integrated box connector. This unit requires a 15A 2-pole breaker.

Looks nice and neat. I can’t comment on the performance of this protector (and hope it stays that way!) but the science is there and this unit should act as the sink for any transient current that comes down the line.

This is by no means a complete protection but rather the first line of defense. One very important note for anyone considering this item: DO NOT INCREASE WIRE LENGTH. And actually, try to make them as short as possible.

This unit works but providing the easiest path to ground for any excess current. The longer the wires the higher will be the voltage differential between the panel and surge protector leading to less transient current going through the surge protector and more going to the devices in the house.

The shorter the wires the better this unit should operate (at least that’s the theory).

I bought 2 of these items. One for our main house (200 Amp Break panel) and another for our cottage (200 Amp older style fuse panel). Connected both units below their main panels and bought-installed proper size breaker-fuse holders as well.

Both worked great – showing double solid green lights. So far, no “burned out” electronics at each location. Thus, I assume they are working properly. For me, this < $150 (for unit + breaker-fuse holders) for each main panel is low cost insurance - if a general size Surge Wave does hit either main panel.

IMO, Whole House Surge Protection devise are we’ll worth their cost and DIY install time. Would I buy again? Without hesitation.

This is a good versatile solution that fits any load center. Make sure to have a double-pole 15A breaker handy. Hook-up wires are multistrand tinned copper (not be be confused with aluminum) to ensure low impedance (that is high admittance of transients) and chemical-contact compatibility with steel, zinc, or copper ground lugs.

The reviewer (Anonymous) from February is just wrong: this is not aluminum wires.

This was so convenient for college! We only get a couple of outlets in each bedroom, so having a surge protector with multiple outlets really came in handy. I have two computers, an iPhone, an iHome and several other products that need an outlet to charge; I highly recommend this to everyone, but especially college students!.

These are pretty handy but I had one that was for a car outlet and oh my gosh how convenient! No more worrying about if you have a car adapter or worrying about one or two people charging at a time. Just plug up on the go.

This exact replica but with a car adapter. How amazing.

These are great until they’re not (obviously right?). Protect your expensive equipment with a surge protector. This has 6 outlets and a lighted on/off button.