All surge protectors work on the same principle of preventing power surges from reaching the electronics connected to your home.  They typically do this by having fuses and other equipment which stops surges in their tracks and sending the power to ground. When you use whole-house surge protection, you can protect your service panel from surges which come from the grid, or from surges which start in one part of your home and spread to your service panel. 

Depending on the type of surge protector, a significant surge may use up the fuses in your protector and require replacement after use.

You could! But whole-house surge protection provides certain unique benefits that a typical surge protector won't. 

• A surge protector can only protect the equipment directly connected to it. For many of your larger appliances, this means they will have no surge protection since they are directly plugged into a circuit. A whole-house surge protector will however work for all equipment connected in your home.
• Most surge protectors do not come with failure indicators. You could be using a surge protector for years without knowing if will do its job during a surge. Whole-house surge protectors do have indicators, and some even provide alerts for when a surge occurs.
• Whole-house surge protectors are rated far much higher surges, typically as high as 80,000 amps.

You may find combining your whole-house surge protection with a regular surge protectors or battery backups to be the best combination to protect your home's electrical equipment.

Depending on where you live, different rules apply for the permitting needed to install a whole-house surge protector.

Town/Village Requirements

On Long Island, permitting requirements vary depending on where you live and the amount of work you're looking to complete during a whole-house surge protector installation. Most towns will not require a permit for this work, but if you also need a service upgrade or upgraded circuits, then this may require permitting to complete.

All electrical work must be done to code, and these codes are handled at the town (such as Hempstead or Babylon) or village (such as Freeport) level. We are a licensed and insured electrician across all of the towns and villages on Long Island, and during our consultation process we can walk you through the process and any permits you may need before beginning work on your home.