On May 14, 12:10*pm, Tony Sivori wrote:
On Tue, 14 May 2013 09:12:35 -0400, David Combs wrote:
I've got some of these 8 or 10 socket surge protectors.

(The Belkin ones are in a metal case)

I might need to get more. *So, looking at Amazon at some of them, I, as
usual, look at the reader reviews, *with ratings of 1(horrible) to
5(good, excellent).

Buy a non-sacrificial Class One type of protector like Brick Wall, SurgeX,
or Zero Surge. They actually stop surges, instead of merely attempting to
shunt them to ground. They don't wear out after repeated surge events.
The best ones even have line conditioners.

The only downside is price. About $400 each. You get what you pay for.

--
Tony Sivori

From reading the description of how they operate, the
other downside would appear to be that unlike the
simpler MOV types, they don't shunt the surge directly
to ground or anywhere else. The incoming pulse sees
an inductor, which presents a very high impedance to
the surge. While that does protect the eqpt on the other
side of the surge protector, it also leaves the surge on
the incoming AC line. With it not shunted to ground,
it's left on the AC line for it to find it's way to ground
somehow and that is what it's going to do. And that could
be through arcing through insulation or through another
unproteced load on the AC line.