Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Surge Protection

I've been studying surge protection for my home, and discovered that I have a major problem that needs to be fixed. I have an older home, built back in the 1950's that only has 2 prong, groundless plugs. Of these, I have been replacing them, a little at a time, with the 3 prong and just putting a jumper between the ground and the white wire connectors. (I learned this trick from my brother who worked for the local electrical company at one time.)

I'm going to buy a Monster MP-HDP-1800 Power Center today. It looks like I also need to run new wire (with a ground wire included) from the surge protector to the circuit breaker box in the basement and attach it to the silver bar in it, if 1) it has one, and 2) if it is grounded. (Oh joy).

Sounds like you need to re-wire your home, time for that major renovation project you have always wanted to do

Nah. I'll just rewire that 1 recepticle for now. It least it might be a fairly straight shot to the breaker box.

Actually, I think I will get my house rewired and will be using an electriction to make sure the building is kept up to code. But until I have the money to do that I want to at least put in a new temporary circuit for just the HT I currently have. I will be splicing into the same circuit that my garage door opener is on. My breaker box doesn't have a ground connection that I can find.

On the other side of the wall, which is outside, the phone line for my DSL is grounded to a pipe, I wonder if I can connect the ground wire from the new line running from the HT to this pipe? Any electrictions that care to comment?

Here's a quote from This link "Incidentally, all grounding of house wiring must go directly to the "grounding bus" in the electrical panel. Older techniques, including attaching a ground to a cold water pipe or to a rod in the earth are no longer acceptable for individual circuits."

My box doesn't seem to have a "grounding bus". The grounding bus and where you connect the white wires appears to be one and the same. The only real solution is to replace the circuit breaker box.

This doesn't help with any bad wiring issues, but I recently bought this surge protector/battery backup and it works great:
http://www.staples.com/APC-Back-UPS-XS-1500VA-10-Outlet-Green-UPS/product_797220?cmArea=SEARCH

I got it on sale for about $40 off the listed price. The battery can support my xbox 360, ps3, 50" lcd rp, denon 3808, and dvr if all are running at the same time for like 13 minutes if the power goes out.

In my opinion, electrical stuff is best left to the electricians

Agreed!

When you can't see something and it can kill you, it's not a good thing.

When I had a whole-house generator installed a few years ago, the next door neighbor wandered over with a gift. He has a business that specializes in power stuff (I wish I knew more about it), and he gave me a whole house surge suppressor. I had the electrician install it at the electrical box. A nice alternative to plugging suppressors in all over the house.

Ray
Do you have a spec or part number on that?

I'd like consider that in my house since, my panel is now open.

Thanks!

I just got back from a Lowes store, from looking at the electrical stuff, bought a Black and Decker book on house electrical, and talked to salesperson. For the whole house surge protection, you purchase it from the utility company and they install it.