Many homeowners mistakenly believe that surge protectors are all they need to protect their electronics. However, it’s equally important to ensure your home is grounded. By combining surge protection and grounding, you’ll have the best odds of avoiding an electrical power surge and accidental electrocution.
What is Grounding?
Grounding provides your home with a vital electrical safety system. Its purpose is to keep people safe, along with reducing the risk of electronic damage or even fire.
Let’s say that your dryer develops a loose wire, and the wire comes in contact with the device’s metal casing. If your home’s electricity hasn’t been grounded, you could be electrocuted by simply touching your dryer. That’s because the entire appliances became live the moment the wire touched the dryer’s metal casing.
Unfortunately, the human body acts as a conductor. Therefore, electricity will flow from the dryer, into your body and out via the ground. If your home is properly grounded, though, this process gets disrupted.
What Are the Risks Involved?
Having 120 volts electrocuting your body is highly dangerous and presents a serious medical risk. In fact, it has the power to disrupt your heart’s rhythm and cause severe internal burns. In some cases, your heart might even stop beating altogether.
Other potential symptoms include:
- Internal organ damage
- Difficulty breathing
- Chest pain
- Loss of consciousness
- Confusion
These aren’t the only risks, either. Affected electronics are often damaged, and they may even cause a house fire. Imagine how much worse the situation will become if you get electrocuted, fall unconscious and a fire breaks out.
What is Surge Protection?
A surge protector is basically like an insurance policy for your electronics and appliances. In other words, it can prevent the damage caused by sudden energy spikes. Furthermore, it can extend the lifespan of your devices.
Once again, the excess energy needs to go somewhere. Instead of flowing through your body, though, a surge protector shunts power to the ground.
What Are the Primary Risks?
Surge protection strips are a good investment that can keep your appliances and electronics properly active. However, this could provide a false sense of security during electrical storms. Additionally, the protective components can become degraded over time, or an overloaded circuit could start a fire.
Other power surge damage risks include:
- Melting
- Overheating
- Igniting nearby materials
If you use surge protection power strips instead of whole-house protection, you’ll need to replace the protectors every three to five years, too. It’s also critical to avoid daisy-chaining, which is when one power strips gets plugged into another power strip. Other important tips include making sure the surge protector has the right joule rating and disconnecting sensitive equipment during severe thunderstorms.
Which One is Better: A Grounded Home or Whole-Home Surge Protection?
Neither one is better than the other. They’re designed to help each other, instead. Your foundation is proper grounding, and surge protection helps minimize the risk of a power surge.
For example, if your washing machine develops a loose wire, having it grounded offers protection to you and your appliance. At the same time, surge protection takes excess energy and sends it directly to the ground. This delivers a powerful one-two punch to keep your home safe.
Grounding Your Home
Older homes in Ocala, FL, and the surrounding areas may also have outdated electrical systems. There are four main indicators that your electrical system needs an update:
- Buzzing
- Age
- Lack of GFCI outlets
- Shocks
Now, let’s take these items one at a time.
1. Buzzing
A buzzing noise emitting from your electrical system often indicates an overloaded circuit, arcing or loose wiring. It may also point out issues with grounding, or a lack of it altogether. The only way to know for sure, though, is by getting a professional electric inspection.
2. Age
Any Ocala home built 20+ years ago needs to have an electrical inspection. That way, you can guarantee code compliance, plus keep your home safer. It might be necessary to conduct replacements, repairs or modifications.
3. Lack of GFCI Outlets
Does your home have GFCI outlets? If so, it’s also grounded. If not, the electrical system is old and needs an immediate update. You should have GFCIs in your kitchen, bathrooms, garage, etc. Basically, anywhere it gets wet needs a GFCI outlet.
4. Shocks
You shouldn’t receive a shock while touching your appliances or metal pipes. If you do, though, it likely means your home isn’t grounded.
Whole-Home Surge Protection
Now that your home is properly grounded, it’s time to talk about the second step of the process. After all, your home needs surge protection, too. Although the installation process of whole-home protection is more expensive than using individual surge protectors, it also offers a much higher level of protection.
We install whole-home surge protection into your home’s main electrical panel. This protects your entire home, including heating and cooling equipment and smart appliances.
What’s the primary difference between whole-home and surge protection power strips?
- Plug-in protection: Offers a second layer of defense for your TVs and computers.
- Whole-home protection: Safeguards your entire home by absorbing major power hits.
Mister Sparky Can Ground Your Home
Becoming or remaining code compliant is one of the best ways to protect your home. At Mister Sparky, our expert team will thoroughly inspect your electrical system, along with repairing or replacing it. Furthermore, we offer whole-home surge protection.
Whole-home surge protection, combined with grounding, is especially important in the Ocala area. There are often more than 75 thunderstorms each year. Florida also holds the record for devastating lightning strikes. About 90 fatalities have occurred since 2005. Therefore, protecting your home via grounding and surge protection is vitally important.
Remember: Don’t put up with any malarky, call Mister Sparky! We’ll address your home’s electrical needs quickly and professionally.
