Derek Cole and an NC State engineer explain why standard surge protectors won't protect HVAC systems. You need lightning arrestors on the outdoor unit, indoor unit, and thermostat wiring. In the Southeast, lightning and power restoration spikes regularly destroy compressors.
Do I need a surge protector for my unit?
Surge protector, something very important, I believe. Now we have the professional engineer from NC State to tell us why do we need— well, first of all, we have a lot of surge protectors on computers and TVs and stuff like that, but we don't see many on heating air units, and that's really one of the most expensive appliances.
Yeah, absolutely. And there's no good method for surge protectors on heat and air units. So what you generally see when you do want to protect your unit is a lightning arrestor, something that protects large surges because your general surge protectors that you're using on your computers and all that are detecting very small amounts of surges to protect items that run on very low voltage, whereas your unit, you know, has items that are high voltage but also has circuit boards that are low voltage. And so there are different levels of lightning arrestors. There's one for your low voltage portion of the unit, there's one for your high voltage portion of the unit. Definitely a good idea, especially in the Southeast where lightning storms are very common in the summertime. And over the course of a summer, we'll have lightning issues with compressors at least once a week that we go out and address and have to sign an affidavit that lightning struck the unit.
And two, we have a lot of, you said a lot of storms, but we have, I mean, it's 95 degrees one minute and then 5 minutes later it's 75 degrees. I imagine that's a problem with power.
Yeah, or issues where the power's out and when the power first comes back on we get a surge of power. When the power abruptly ends and has those flickers that we all experience, the voltage can change over that time period and cause high voltage spikes and do some damage.
Yeah. So lightning arrestor, good idea.
Lightning arrestor, very good idea.
Yeah. So we have a low voltage, which we sell a lot on the zone systems, things like that. And then we have a standard one that we install for the units. And if you have two pieces, should one be on each outdoor and indoor piece?
Absolutely. And everywhere there's a connection to your main power source, your panel, you need to have a lightning arrestor. If you have two pieces, you'd put one on the outdoor unit, the indoor unit, and then there's a low voltage, your thermostat wire that goes between the two units. You would tie your low voltage lightning arrestor to that portion of it. If you wanted something, they do make whole house surge protectors that go in your panel that are more suited for handling surges, but for your unit itself, you're generally dealing with lightning arrestors.
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