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Back when I worked at a PC service shop, the most common lightning surges I've encountered came down phone lines, usually damaging the phone, Sky box (back when they required a phone line), Internet router and any Ethernet device plugged into the router. In the dial-up modem days it was also common to see badly charred modems, although surprisingly the PCs were usually fine after fitting a new modem or network card. We had a power surge about 20 years ago in the middle of the night where I'm glad we had surge protected power strips. We noticed the RCD was tripped in the morning and wouldn't reset until we unplugged the chest freezer, which died with a ground fault. The microwave oven display and a mobile phone plugged in were also dead. Our TVs, PC, printer, etc were all plugged in surge protected power strips and all fine, even though the "Protected" LED on one of the TV's power strip went out.

Brilliant, thanks for sharing this, I am about to get one fitted into my home supply as well as an AFDD (I saw your video on that too). Love his channel 🙂

Definitely a good idea. A lightning strike found it's way into my house once. Two TV's, a laptop and three landline phones died as a result. I ran an electronics repair company for a long time and whenever there was a lightning storm I would end up working evenings and weekends to keep up with the workload. Quite lucrative actually.

I've been fitting SPDs as standard when it was first mentioned in the 18th edition regs. No point giving the customer thr choice. They'll thank you when it does its job.

Once had a Herbert turret lathe that used reverse current to brake the chuck. Beiing an old machine, it had a cotrol box the size of a small car. The breakers were lage copper contacts which needed cleaning regularly. One day, one of the contacts did not close properly and it blew the main fuses on the board, blew the telephone repeater bell off the wall and destroyed a joint in the main cable outside in the road.

Which one is the one who disconected when fault occurs ? I have one in my country but it takes 0,5 seg which is pretty slow considering that a spike could be faster than 0,5 seg

Brilliant contents as all ways Joe… that picture looked liked beanfield Avenue 😂

Does lightening rod can prevent the appliances damaging from lightening without surge device?

Brilliant video Joe, I'm going to send this to my customers when I need to explain about SPD's Keep up the great work

what happens if i connect the SPD to the neutral instead of ground? since i don't have ground wire

I used this device, it is way expensive but it can save you devices

You would think they would have to make an annoying bleep when they are non functioning. Probably would have been better to make it a requirement for new installations or board changes. Can they be retro fitted outside the board in their own enclosure ?

If you have an SPD do you still need surge protected power strips?

I know that road in Corby with the Pylons blasting through the housing estate...

Is the wear of the spd related to how many surges it has protected against?

I think giving the installation owner the choice is a happy intermediate option until amendment 3 makes it mandatory.

Very good and informative as usual but at some point the DNO will have to take responsibility for this

if i had the money to build my own house (i hope my numbers come up soon), i'd make sure that all 3 types of surge protectors (and other protective devices like RCDs and AFDDs) are installed, even if they're not required by regulations.

if we all have spds in our consumer units would this make things like surge protected extension leads extinct and do these products actually protect equipment e.g. masterplug surge protectors do these actaully work and save equipment?

In the industry, we commonly use a 20 or 30A breaker to safeguard the SPD (Surge Protective Device). If a lightning strike causes a surge of high current through the breaker and the SPD, the question arises: will these breakers trip, and if so, will their activation impact the performance of the SPD?

I usually just install it.

Does this cover an EMP?

Seems like a cop out to me with regard to fitting SPD's in domestic installations ( in the latest BS7671) How the heck you can ask a domestic user to agree /disagree on this ?? Most domestic users would not have a clue. When I used the formula in the "old" BS7671:2018 - which actually wasn't that difficult to do -in many cases it showed that SPD''s weren't required -but -I was advised by my assessor "to fit them anyway" with regard to the clauses mentioning danger to life and property etc . Seems to me that this was all rather "vague" / few bothered with using the formula - and hence it was removed. Anyway - passing on to SPD protection itself -there is a requirement to keep the earth lead from the SPD below 0.5 M in length, - and that begs the question - exactly WHERE does the surge energy go when the SPD operates ? It would seem to me that there is a means for this energy to be also "dumped" to ground via the main CPC system ( back to suppliers earth in the case of a "TN" system ) - and so - the question of length of earth cable comes into question with regard to its DC resistance AND Inductive reactance - since: The transients will be of short duration and thus will contain high frequency components where inductive reactance "Xl" could be significant (XL = 2 * pi * Frequency in hz * inductance in henries) So the inductive reactance could be significant - and keeping leads short minimises XL ( and of course DC resistance) or - put another way: Keep the "impedance" of the system low - where impedance = the vector sum of R + Xl or, for the electrical engineers : R + jXl Those of us that are also Radio Frequency Engineers will know this perfectly well with regard to earthing radio communication systems - it is just that if you only ever consider 50Hz - the effect of inductive reactance is negligible in most cases - but here we are - all of a sudden as "sparkies - having to consider the effects of transients lasting milli seconds or even microseconds !! As the song goes: "It's a whole new world" !! It seems to me that this whole issue of "SPD" is not well presented in BS7671 - and indeed not well understood either by many - and so - the default position is "just fit it anyway" -- it becomes just a "box ticking" exercise ....... so ...... if that expensive smart TV fries .... you can say hand on heart : " it wasn't my fault gov! "

3:55 Indirect lightning 'strokes' ..? 🤔

Do you need to mention that the SPDs need protection by a suitable MCB?

surely the future owners of the property matter !?

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Don't most people these days use multi-way adapters with in-built SPDs anyway? Obviously if getting my consumer unit changed or getting rewired I'd want an SPD in it, but mine had a CU change shortly before I moved in.

Seems strange that we call them SURGE protection devices, yet they protect against transient voltage SPIKES. I think of SURGES relating to current, rather than voltage characteristics? Is it just me?

I got one installed when I had a (expensive!) heat pump put in. One area that’s not really clear is whether they should be connected via an MCB or just directly across an RCD? They can fail short circuit when they get ‘tired’ so I presume they’d trip the RCD anyway as they’re grounding the supply anyway? But some electricians are putting in an MCB…

There is no end card for AFDDs.

To me it sounds like the Adt2 owner's requirement is a transitional thing until it becomes an expected expenditure: giving the electrician a "well if you insist, mate!" to a penny-pincher. I expect it will change in time, once it's become an expected cost.

I'm sure customers check the colour of the flag on their SPDs just like they all test their RCDs every 6 months and smoke alarms every week. 😂

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Schneider's *domestic* boards are horrid things! So mishmashed and non intuitive, not to mention expensive . Give me fusebox any day, even Hager would do! Its amazing that a company that makes good 3 phase boards fails so epically at the * normal* stuff.

cant hear you, im at 80% with headphones on. your just way too soft, sorry, passing on video