Electrical surges can cause £1,000’s worth of damage to electrical equipment and appliances in your home.
In the modern home and business, we use a lot of power-sensitive equipment. These types of appliances can become damaged and unusable from electrical surges. Electrical equipment has also been known to catch fire from electrical surges accounting for thousands of pounds worth of damage to equipment such as:
- Phones
- Laptops
- Computers
- TVs
- Routers
- Servers
- Dishwashers
- Kettle
- Microwave
- CCTV
- Chargers
- Fire Alarms
- Lights
- Fridges
- Photocopiers
- Printers
- Heating Systems
- Extension Leads
- USB Ports
The Dangers of power surges
When your electrical equipment goes down it can interrupt essential business operations and could leave you vulnerable to the loss of irretrievable data. No one wants to spend their savings or budgets buying new equipment for their home or business. With the recent weather throughout the UK and Europe FBS Electrical Thanet have attended various jobs that include:
- Lights being knocked out and in need of replacing in a rented property
- No heating due to a damaged heating controller
- Fuse board replacement due to a leak in a property
How does surge protection work?
Surge protection is designed to prevent a surge of electricity damaging your property, it does this by re-directing the electricity and energy into the ground. Due to the nature of surge protection devices, all three of the follow surge protection types are required for adequate protection:
- Type 1: Whole House Protection
Installed on incoming services (e.g. mains power and data) if a lightning protection system is present and overhead lines are at risk of a lightning strike
- Type 2: Whole House Protection
Installed at the main incomer. Further SPD’s will need to be fitted at boards more than 10m away. The modern property with an underground cable supply would typically use a type 2 unit
- Type 3: Point-of-Use
Smaller protectors at wall outlets where you plug-in appliances
Is surge protection worth it?
To determine if surge protection is worth installing in your home or business a risk assessment must be carried out. This will determine whether surge protection is advised. The survey will assess the cost of fitting a surge protection device to your equipment against the value of the equipment which could be affected.
Insurance companies are now generally asking claimants who have suffered damages to their property due to lightning strikes or power surges if a surge protection device is present in the property.
Only as good as your electrical installation and earthing
If you own an older home with ungrounded electrical accessories or a home with sub-standard wiring and earthing, this will not be helped by install a surge protection device without the necessary upgrades. Even if you have the best surge protection in your home or property, it will still fail if there is no escape route for the excess electricity to go. If your home or business has wiring and earthing issue, you should have them addressed by a professional electrician at the first instance. As the costs of repairing the wiring and upgrades will outweigh the cost of replacing appliances and the cost of downtime of your business. You can read more about having your house or business rewired by reading our When should I rewire my house? Blog post.
FBS Electrical Thanet can also carry out all types of electrical inspection, lighting installations and any types of electrical work that you require an electrician in Thanet.
Call us today on 01843 260465 or email info@fbselectricalthanet.co.uk to discuss how we can help.