Summer Reminder: Surge Protection

With the approach of summer storms, today we're talking about what a surge protector is and how it helps protect your home, electrical system, and everything plugged into it.

Here in the Lowcountry, we are all familiar with summer lightning storms and their frequency. Unfortunately, I have seen electrical surges from lightning wreak havoc on some very pricy items, the damage of which could have been prevented with the use of a surge protector.

Before we get into surge protection, let's talk about what a surge is.

Electrical surges, sometimes called “transient voltage," are voltage spikes that enter our electrical system. There is not one single issue that causes these voltage spikes. They can enter your home through lightning that strikes power lines, power companies performing maintenance on power lines, fallen tree limbs that cause downed power lines, or internal surges from within your home (like from a motor such as an AC unit starting--although internal surges are not typically the most damage-inflicting).

Why do electrical surges damage appliances and electrical systems?

Most of the items in our home run off electronics. These range from 5-32 volts. A surge can deliver anywhere from 170 volts, all the way into the thousands of volts. Our electronics simply are not engineered to withstand such power.

Outdoor outlet completely destroyed by an electrical surge.

When an electrical surge courses through your system and appliances, these systems' inability to handle the influx of electricity can cause burning, melting, and potential combustion.

This is where the surge protector plays its part. A surge protector works as a bridge between your panel and your electronics. It diverts or “shunts” the excess voltage to your ground rod outside, preventing that power surge from running through your system.

Anecdotally, A properly installed surge protector is installed as close to the main breaker in your electrical panel as possible. This is to ensure that as soon as the surge enters your panel, it is diverted to the ground rod outside before it runs through any circuits. If you already have a surge protector installed, it's important to check that it is in the proper position in your panel.

Panel wiring heavily damaged from an electrical storm

Having a surge protector installed in each of your electrical panels is something that we wholeheartedly recommend. This preventative measure has the potential to save you a lot of money and a lot of headaches. Although there are plug-in surge protectors that can be used directly at the site of plug-in for your electronics, they don't offer the same level of

protection that an in-panel mounted and installed protector does. Additionally, good surge protectors installed in-panel come with a warranty from the protector's manufacturer in case a surge were to get through, something that a plug-in protector will not come with.

In-panel surge protectors should be installed by a licensed electrician.

At Gloudeman Electric, we offer both surge protection and ground rod testing, as your ground rod is an important piece of your home's electrical system and in diverting surges; our ground rod test ensures your ground resistance is low enough to dissipate that voltage in order to maximize the chance of protecting your house against strikes.

Thank you for reading and we hope you feel more empowered about protecting your home against the monster storms we get in the Charleston area.

Andrew

Lead Electrician

Gloudeman Electric, LLC

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Electrical Overloads & How to Prevent Them

Most of us plug in our appliances and lamps, switch on our lights, and use our electrical system without a second thought. We act as if there is an unlimited tap of electricity at our fingertips--unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that.

You see, we (electricians) lay out a home's electrical system based on the expected and by-code electrical demands for each room and the occupancy levels throughout a house. We pull dedicated circuits for large appliance needs (washing machines, ovens, HVAC units, etc.) as well as areas that demand more power than a typical outlet would require. Your kitchen countertop circuit is a good example of an "extra power needed" area. Your countertop requires more power so that you can sufficiently energize countertop appliances such as air fryers, espresso machines, or high power blenders. We may also pull higher power circuits for a workshop the homeowner will be using power tools in.

Not all circuits are alike.

We're talking largely about kitchens today. Have you ever noticed that when you're making your morning toast and smoothie and running the microwave and blender simultaneously, sometimes the breaker will trip? Or, perhaps someone in the family bought a new table saw and got excited, tried it out, and a breaker tripped?

Often when a breaker trips while running an appliance or something with high energy

demands, homeowners believe that there is something seriously wrong with their home.

But, in most cases, there isn’t a ghost in the house destroying your electrical. What is usually going on is what we call an “overload”.

An overload is when a breaker is pushed beyond its ampacity rating, causing it to trip. In simple terms, it can't power everything that's plugged into it.

How can you prevent this issue from happening? My clients have this problem most frequently in the kitchen. They’ll try to use a blender and a toaster at the same time, and the breaker will kick. What you can do to resolve this is what we call “dividing the load.”

It is NEC (National Electrical Code) for there to be two dedicated 20 amp "small appliance" circuits present in a kitchen. This means that, besides your large appliance circuits (refrigerator, oven), it is a code requirement that there be two other dedicated (isn't shared with another room/area) circuits specifically for the kitchen (every room has different code requirements, but we're specifically talking about kitchens today since this is where we most frequently hear customers complaining of tripping issues).

To determine your separate circuits, what you need to do is figure out which outlets/plugs are on separate circuits from each other (remember, you should have two separate dedicated circuits in your kitchen). You can quite easily determine this by plugging in a lamp and turning breakers off until the lamp turns off. Once the light on the lamp is out, plug that lamp into another receptacle inside your kitchen. You will know which outlets are on a shared circuit if the lamp stays off when it's plugged into each. Once you reach a receptacle where, when plugged in and turned on, the lamp is on, you'll know that the receptacle is an isolated/different circuit. All you’ve got to do from that point is plug in one appliance to the first outlet/determined circuit, and plug the other desired appliance into the other circuit, which you determined is separate, and you should be good to go! This same theory works throughout your house.

Bottom line: if you have things that are kicking the breaker when turned on, try "dividing the load" as a first course of action.

Breaker in the kitchen still kicking? You've done all you can. At that point (if your breaker is still tripping, even if you've isolated the circuit and aren't running two "high power demand"

appliances on the same circuit), it's time to have an electrician jump in. At Gloudeman Electric, we can pull you a dedicated circuit to take the stress off a specific circuit so that you can plug in multiple different appliances at once. We also offer load calculations which helps us to determine what can be plugged into the circuit in concern without tripping the breaker.

Overload tripping is a completely normal function of a circuit breaker and typically means that the breaker is functioning properly. A tripping breaker due to an overload protects our home from dangerous hazards.

I hope this blog on electrical overloads and how to prevent them has been helpful to you!

Andrew Gloudeman

Lead Electrician

Gloudeman Electric, LLC

Electrical Connection Points: Protect Your Home

What are connection points and why should you care?

Using our appliances, lights, and electric cars is everyday minutiae to us. Most of this stuff comes robotically without more than a glancing thought. But what exactly happens when the connections within these electrical items aren’t tightened as they should be? Let’s get into it!

The heart of your home’s electrical system is the electrical meter. The meter is fed from the utility (what the city owns) to the breaker box inside or outside the house (depending on where you live, some breaker panels are inside or outside homes). Power then flows through a variety of circuit breakers to supply the load demanded by the circuits inside a home. These breakers go to HVAC circuits, outlets, lighting, etc.: Anything in your house that demands electricity.

When things go south:

Sometimes an electrical installation can become seriously damaged when a connection is not tight. Nearly every single electrical device, panel, or appliance has a manufacturer specification for tightening and installation printed on it. If these specifications are not followed, a bad connection can occur.

There are many issues a bad connection can cause. To name a few:

- Melting of devices

- Damage to electrical boxes

- Damage to appliances

- House fires

We know that the last one sounds the scariest, but it is preventable. We’ll get into that a little later…

The above issues can happen within your house when you have interior bad connections, but there are also potential hazards that can occur outside the structure. If a bad connection is present where the utility brings power in, you could “lose a neutral” to your system. The neutral wire in your electrical system is your “return path to ground”. It’s a very important wire (we won’t get into too much of the specifics), even though typically all people think about when they consider wires in their homes are the hot and the ground wires. If you lose a neutral wire, all of your household standard 120-volt receptacles, lights, and everything plugged into an outlet will receive 240 volts of electricity. This will cook all of the aforementioned things, and undeniably result in very expensive replacements and repairs.

When should you be concerned about loose connections at the utility? If all of the lights in your home are flickering, or you are noticing broad power issues (not isolated to a singular room), then it's time to call the power company to take a look at the utility to see if there are loose connections on their end.

See below for a video that shows you a real live action view of how loose wires can cause fires.

So, what should you do?

As a homeowner there are some preventative steps you can take to avoid loose connections. To start, and something you can do yourself, is to make sure all of your bulbs are nice and snug inside their sockets (they’re a connection point, too!). Make sure all of your receptacles hold whatever you plug into them tightly. If you notice your plugs are wiggly and not holding the male outlet end securely, they should be replaced (we can do that).

If you see that your breaker panel appears aged (rusted) or notice a burning smell—or perhaps you just want the peace of mind that your house has a nice solid connection—we offer panel tune ups (where we tighten connections inside your electrical panel) and evaluations. We also offer visual inspection of your home and can ensure that your receptacles handle a load correctly by using a special testing device to test every outlet.

There are roughly 51,000 house fires each year caused by electrical issues and failures, and it is my personal goal to ensure that every electrical item that I touch has a solid connection and is done up to the manufacturer’s specifications. I want everyone to be enlightened and educated on the dangers of loose connections and hope you feel more so after this article.

Andrew Gloudeman Lead Electrician Gloudeman Electric, LLC