Surge and lightning suppression products are full of snake oil. To protect yourself you must understand the fundamental requirements for these products to actually work. First off you want lightning protection and if this is done correctly then surge protection comes with it.

1. It MUST say lightning on the box or in the warranty. If it does not move on.

2. It MUST come with insurance. If it does not move on.

3. Even if it has the above it MUST also have all the connections necessary to actually perform what is claimed. To protect the equipment from lightning you must create a barrier between the outside world and your stuff. This means if you have cable, dish, and an outside antenna you will need 3 antenna in/out connections for all three sources. Most dish receivers also use the phone line so you will need a phone in/out jack also. All equipment AC must be connected through the suppressor. Do not bypass the suppressor. If you have more AC plugs than the suppressor supports get another one or plug an AC strip into it. Do not bypass the suppressor.

One connection that must be utilized is the round ground pin of the AC plug on your surge suppressor. If you defeat the ground pin of the AC plug or if the ground circuit of your house is faulty the suppressor WILL NOT WORK!

Check the following post for other possible problems with grounding...
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4470

Problem Examples:
I have many customers who have such a product hooked up correctly. They buy a DVD player and connect the AC directly to the wall. You just bypassed the suppressor and it will not work correctly.

I had another customer that purchased a suppressor and hooked everything up correctly except for one thing. On the antenna out from the suppressor they hooked up a 2 way splitter. One end went to the TV. The other end went to a cable that went outside and around the house to another room to a TV that was plugged directly into the wall. They bypassed the suppressor and it will not work correctly. I simply moved the splitter to the input side of the suppressor.

I have a few customers who have such a product hooked up correctly but find on the back of the TV a cable from the TV audio out that goes to another area of the room where the stereo system is that is plugged directly to the wall. They bypassed the suppressor and it will not work correctly.

Be careful of whole house protection and read the fine print. The last one I looked at for a customer did not cover damage due to lightning, cable or telephone. It had to be a power surge.

If you are having problems with lightning your best solution is whole house protection AND suppressors.

4. If you should suffer a hit there are typically only 2 results. Either the suppressor will absorb the energy or it will sacrifice itself. If you are having problems with your stuff then bypass the suppressor, If everything works again then it did it’s job. Get another one.

5. If you should suffer a hit that causes equipment to be damaged and wish to be covered by the insurance provided with the product you will be required to ship the suppressor to the manufacturer for inspection. They know if you followed all the rules because there will be damage to some part of the device. If the suppressor is fully functional you will not be reimbursed for the damages so make sure you follow the rules.

6. If you follow all these steps you are good to go. Over the last decade my experience is the equipment is always OK and the suppressor is damaged. Just like it is supposed to be. If equipment was damaged it was never covered and the customer had to pay for the repair or replacement of the product.

BTW
Had a customer who took a hit and he had to remove the suppressor to get his stuff to work. This suppressor came with a lifetime warranty so he sent it off for repair/replacement. 2 days later he took another hit without the suppressor and had to repair his TV. The cost of another suppressor would have been much less than the repair.

Richard F. Fisher

I was stunned to see so much good advice without mention of the most important aspect of any suppression system...grounding. We see many systems in which antenna, satellite, or cable lines into the home are not grounded properly (a violation of electrical codes) and systems with loose or corroded ground connections. Without good grounding, no surge suppressor can work properly.

Also, it is important for surge suppressors to have protection across all three combinations of the ac lines, hot-gnd, hot-neutral, and neutral-gnd. If the grounding is faulty or becomes damaged, some protection may be found in the other pathways.

Thanks Leonard!

Nice article!!

I would like to add that even though a "Ground" light or "Fault Protection" light indicates the unit is connected to a grounded plug, that may not be the case. A grounded satellite system which is powered by that surge unit may give a false indication that the unit is plugged into a grounded outlet. This article explains further. http://www.dbsinstall.com/diy/Grounding-8.asp

I've found alot of telephone line surge suppressors prevent the caller id signal from getting thru to the intended decoding device. Any suggestions ?

Carlsdad, great addition and huge point. I carry an outlet checker with me!

Hi -

I've read these 'posts' and now am curious about one item.....no one seems to have mentioned a specific #6
copper ground (literally) from the metal mast to a copper-clad steel rod in the earth, using the appropiate connectors. This was the case....has it been altered?
And, of course, it would have to be a residence, NOT a commercial building, etc.. eli whitney

That has to with installing an antenna and is not directly related to the topic of this thread. Bear in mind that if each topic or article were to cover every little parameter it would quickly become a book.

Richard...

Gotcha!! understood. eli whitney

I read your article re the surge protector. I bought a thirty-eight dollar one from Costco and plugged all my perpherials into it. The only problem is is that I get better reception/clarity of vision via the wall socket than I do when using the surge protector. I was befuddled for when purchasing it I thought it would be the very opposite of what I am experiencing. All the other products seem to work fine and they are plugged into the surge protector.

jtmj

Hello--
You WERE expecting...improved vision/clarity by having a surge protector?? Perhaps you are confusing these with a "constant voltage'" unit, ???

In any case, improving your HDTV's picture quality has NIL to do with that surge protector---think of those as a "sophisticated fuse unit" or the like to protect that equipment from INCOMING problems from the 120V-
NOTHING ELSE.

IF you have too many watts in that strip ( above it's rating ), then, it should trip the built-in circuit breaker.

Picture Quality improvement is another search.

Perhaps you could give more about what your problem(s) were to start. everett whitney

Eli is correct in terms of AC conditioning and removing noise.

What you are talking about is signal input loss by using the RF jacks. This means your signal is already low going into the house or is being dragged down by a poorly balanced cable distribution system in the house. Call you cable company to get that checked. Bottom line is you will not be fully protected from lightning unless you use it.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about lightning protection and surge protectors even in the trades.

Most lightning damage is done, not by direct lightning strikes, but strikes some where in the area resulting in surges or spikes coming in on the telephone or power lines. The magnitude of these surges in tiny compared to a direct or even close strike, but they are small enough that a surge protector can swallow them without usually leaving scorch marks.

The single most important item about lightning protection is grounding and that is a "single point ground" where every thing being used ties to the same ground. That way if there is a strike or nearby hit, all lines, such as electrical, telephone, cable, and TV antenna rise together. There may still be some differences, but they are more likely to be only a few volts instead of thousands. A good ground system like this will let the surge suppressors do their job if they need to. However it does little good to run the AC line and coax through a suppressor and then plug the phone line directly into your receiver.

A good ground is not just a single 8 foot ground rod at the base of the TV antenna mast. For safety it takes a fairly elaborate ground.

My top antennas are at 130 feet. They have been taking an average of 3 *verified* direct hits a year. Those were seen, how many there have actually been I do not know. What I do know is since finishing up the ground system and connecting it as a single point ground I've had no damage with all those direct hits and I do not use surge suppressors. I also have 5 computers hard wired to a Gigabit network with a 130 feet of CAT5e cable that runs within 10 feet of the base of my tower.

Lightning is unpredictable and lightning strikes are not created equal. Proper precautions can minimize the risk, but there is absolutely nothing that will protect a system from one of the so called "super strikes" that are many times more powerful than typical strikes.
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/Tower30.htm is a photo of my tower and back yard. the Dish Network small dish is not visible but it's about 15 feet up on the side of the big tower that lines up with the back side of the house. OTA TV antennas are at 90 and 95 feet. It's not a typical TV antenna installation nor is the ground system typical with 33 8' ground rods CadWelded (TM) to over 600 feet of bare #2 copper wire. But it works, or has for the last 5 or 6 years.

Richard wrote:That has to with installing an antenna and is not directly related to the topic of this thread. Bear in mind that if each topic or article were to cover every little parameter it would quickly become a book.

Thing is, a good, well designed ground system that includes the mast/tower, cable, satellite, telephone line, electrical feed, and any other services coming in the home determines how hard the line filtering/suppressors have to work. With a well designed ground *system* the surge suppressors can be much more effective and last longer. Even the best surge suppressor installed in a system without a good and balanced ground may prove ineffective in protecting equipment from a nearby strike. So the mast grounding if done properly is directly related to how well the suppressor can do its job or even if it can do its job.

Very nice post, I am a newb and found it to be rather enlightening. Do you have any recommendations for lightning and surge protection. I live in Central Florida (the lightning capital of the US I think) and have had some appliances bite the dust from electrical surges. I do not think we have had a direct lightning hit yet (knock on wood). I want to be sure my new investment is protected from low or high surges and direct hits if possible. I use an APC UPS for my desktop, but after reading the article I don't think I am really protected since I have some peripherals plugged in to wall outlets (time to clean up the dust bunnies and rewire). Do you think a UPS would be ok, or should I get a power conditioner also? Do I need a battery back-up?

Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated !