![\"Whole](\"http:\/\/thehoneckers.com\/var\/resizes\/AndyProjects\/IMG_1807.jpg?m=1323656539\" "\\"Whole")
<\/p>\nSo a while back before “winter” started, we had a big electrical storm. \u00a0Luckily I have a Cutler-Hammer whole-house surge protector installed. \u00a0It took the majority of the huge electrical surge we had, but some other devices in the house (and garage) also got damaged. \u00a0I’d hate to wonder what would have happened if that surge protector wasn’t present in the main breaker panel. \u00a0Anyway, the huge surge literally blew up the Cutler-Hammer protector. \u00a0I could take advantage of their warranty and pay some money to ship the thing to them, wait like 3 months, and then hope that they’d actually replace it like their warranty states. Or….after looking inside (the top was blown off, so why not), copy theirs and make it better and have a surge protector back in the breaker panel way before the 3 months of waiting for the stupid warranty.<\/p>\n
If you haven’t figured it out by now, yes, I made my own, and the design is freely available so you can make your own!<\/p>\n
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The original surge protector that I bought was a Cutler-Hammer\u00a0CHSPMICRO. \u00a0It’s around $50 at Home Depot. \u00a0It can take 120,000 amps (should be enough to power a flux capacitor), or 1920 joules. \u00a0Cutler-Hammer has better surge protectors out there, but you have to get them someplace besides Home Depot\/Lowes. \u00a0The surge amps\/joules mean next to nothing as you’ll have no idea what kind of surge you’re going to encounter, but the higher the numbers are, the more surges you can handle before something blows up.<\/p>\n
These surge protectors (or more notably, the Metal Oxide Varistors or MOV, inside) do wear out with the surges that they endure. \u00a0Eventually they will fail when they endure enough surges. \u00a0I think they usually fail gracefully in the sense that you won’t know they’re dead. \u00a0But if they endure a huge surge, they could fail catastrophically, like mine did. \u00a0In fact, the other devices that were damaged all had their small MOV’s blown up along with vaporized traces on the PCB. \u00a0This is partly why it’s recommended to change out your small surge protectors from time to time. \u00a0The other reason is to make you buy stuff that you probably don’t need.<\/p>\n
Now the whole house surge protector isn’t meant to replace your smaller surge strips and such. \u00a0They’re a supplement to those, and as an added benefit, you get surge protection for your appliances too. \u00a0The surge protector that I got from Cutler-Hammer (CH from now on) is designed to protect a normal US 220\/230\/240V single-phase panel. \u00a0This probably could be adapted for European power, but I haven’t tried such things.<\/p>\n
The CH protector is very simple. \u00a0It has MOVs going between each hot and neutral and then each hot and ground. \u00a0It also has 4 thermal fuses (2 for each hot-neutral and hot-ground connection) w\/ some LEDs so if these fuses blow out, the LEDs go out, implying that your protector is damaged and should be replaced. \u00a0In my case, the thermal fuses were still mostly intact, even though some of the MOVs inside the box blew up and fire spewed out of one of them. \u00a0So I guess if the top of your protector blows up and everything is charred inside, that means it’s damaged. \u00a0For my protector, I beefed up the number of MOVs inside the thing, used higher surge-rated devices, and added 2 additional LEDs so you know if any of the fuses blew. \u00a0The CH protector only lets you know if 2 of the 4 fuses blew.<\/p>\n
Other than that, the surge protector is the same kinda design. \u00a0Attention was given to trace clearance due to the high-voltage, and as much copper as possible was used to get current to the MOVs. \u00a0What you really want is equal resistance paths to each MOV in order to totally share the load, but this is really hard to do by hand, and hey, I did a better job @ that then CH did. \u00a0My surge protector is somewhere between the CH CHSPMAX and CHSPULTRA. \u00a0I dunno how they figure their specs out, so it’s hard to compare joule ratings of the devices I used vs. the ones they used. \u00a0You’re also free to substitute better MOVs in for an even more awesome surge protector. \u00a0The ones you sub in need to be rated for 130V (the devices only see 1\/2 of the 220V since they’re connected from hot to neutral or hot to ground) and rated for whatever number of joules you want.<\/p>\n
For wires to the thing, 12AWG stranded is the smallest wire you should use. \u00a0The holes barely accommodate 10AWG stranded, but you can get them in there. \u00a0You want as thick of wire as possible going to this. \u00a0Inside your breaker panel, you’ll need a 15A double-pole breaker (common trip) to connect the two hot wires from the surge protector. \u00a0The neutral wire in the protector goes to the neutral bus bar, and the ground wire to the ground bus bar. \u00a0You will need a beefy soldering iron to solder in all the parts. \u00a0Be careful with the thermal fuses as excessive heat could melt them. \u00a0I’m not going to offer this as a kit (unless there a lot of interest in such a thing) as there are so few parts that it’s easy enough to go to Digikey or Mouser and order what you need and go from there.<\/p>\n
One last thing: This isn’t UL\/CSA\/EU or whatever certified for safety. \u00a0Use this at your own risk. \u00a0That being said, I think my design is better than CH’s is, but I don’t have lightning bolts laying around to test this with, so I can’t say for sure. \u00a0I’m not responsible for any damage that is caused by this device (although w\/ the fuses and circuit breaker, you’re pretty safe from any major failure w\/ this box).<\/p>\n
Whole House Surge Protector:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
\n Design Files<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ![\"Whole](\"https:\/\/ahdesign.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/IMG_1817.jpg\" "\\"Whole")
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n PCBs are $15 shipped to USA only.<\/p>\n