Whole house power surge protector.

Current situation:

You live in rural Costa Rica, you have a properly grounded house, and you have installed many power strip protectors for most of the electronic devices such as computers and TV sets. You know that Grupo ICE’s electrical grid is very unstable or can become very unstable from other people’s testimonials and nothing is protecting your bigger items such as washing machine, dryers, water heaters, etc.

You are also well aware that “good” power surge protectors or power strips that are installed on the 3 prong receptable outlets for computer use are found sometimes unreliable to “catch” high-speed high-power electrical surges coming from Grupo ICE’s electrical grid and you feel the need to ADD a WHOLE HOUSE POWER SURGE PROTECTOR so that it works in conjunction with the power strips to protect small items (like computers, TV sets, iPads, etc) and so that it finally protects bigger items such as kitchen appliances, water heaters, air conditioning units that have no protection at all.

Now… How do you know if you can install a whole house power surge protector?

Well… the way you know if your home was properly wired is by purchasing a cheap 3-prong outlet receptable tester. You can buy some here or head to the hardware store to get one. Keep in mind that there are basically two key requirements to install the whole-house power surge protector. The first is having a proper ground that you can check with the yellow tester and the second is at the circuit breaker box where you can not have a ground wire and a neutral wire sharing the same bar. This is because the ground bar is a separate circuit that you install at your house and it should never be connected to Grupo ICE’s neutral wire. Most of the times ground does not carry electricity, it’s just a place where electricity gets dumped when there is a surge but the neutral wire does carry electricity in a constant basis. So to sum up, if you do the yellow tester’s test, you pass and your circuit breaker box installation was done by a competent electrician then you should not have a problem to install the whole-house power surge protector.

What is a whole house power surge protector? where does it go? How much does it cost with installation?

We do install whole house power surge protectors anywhere in Costa Rica.

Typical professional installation at the cicuit breaker box costs USD $400.

Please give us a call at 8701-0007 or email us at : alberto_araya@hotmail.com