We just had our furnace (installed Spring 2018) and heat pump installed earlier this year, serviced.

The same company installed and service both units. They came highly recommended and have always treated us well, but I have never price shopped them.

They are recommending surge protectors for both units, at a cost of $325.00 for each unit.

Is this pretty normal, regarding cost?

For $650.00, am I better served by looking into a whole home surge protector. According to Duke, it is not offered through them in Ohio, so I would be looking for an Electrician to install.

Do you have a surge protector for your furnace?

Do you have a whole home surge protector?

All recommendations appreciated.

Thank you.

No surge protector. In the forty years of owning a home have not had a problem with surges. I think it depends upon who supplies your electricity.

I went whole house.

If your new Furnace and Heat Pump are the new high efficiency designs w/ Variable Speed Drives, I'd put a Surge Protector in front of each to protect the Input Semi-Conductors in those units. I'd put a Whole House Surge Suppressor at your Distribution Panel as well. TVSS (Transient Voltage Surge Suppression) systems are excellent, but not impenetrable...And all bets are off w/ lightning! It's worth it to provide dedicated surge suppression to expensive/critical equipment.

Is this to protect from surges created by your equipment or surges from outside the home?

If it's micro surges from the equipment and you want to protect other sensitive equipment, put it near the HVAC equipment.

If it's to protect the HVAC equipment (and other equipment) put it on the electrical panel preferably on the breaker closet to the main which may require relocation of one or two existing breakers.

You want the surge protector as close to the source of the surge as possible. You can accomplish both by installing whole house near main breaker and relocating HVAC breakers closer to surge protector breaker.

Most of the surge protectors I've seen installed by HVAC companies violate the installation instructions of the surge protector rendering the already hard to make a claim on warranty invalid. Additionally unless it's specifically designed to be installed on the equipment it will possibly violate the electrical code especially if your equipment is wired with aluminum wiring.

Do you actually have a furnace or air handler?

Personally I would go whole house. It would provide the most protection for all of you electronics.

You can’t have too many. Layer them up. I have a whole house SPD at my meter disconnect, and one in every sub-panel in the house.

All these electronic boards in everything isn’t like in our fathers’s time. Heck, I’ve got $400 in LED lighting alone. It’d be nice to kill the transient voltages before it wrecks all this stuff. My AC is a monster. You know it’s creating nasty surges every time it cycles. Those boards in a variable speed furnace are what, like $1600 or so? Makes a SPD seem like a good investment.

My asshole power company quit trimming trees and doing substation maintenance for 3.5 years and of course blamed COVID. This summer our grid became as stable as a 3rd world country, and we were getting dozens of surges a month and power outages on sunny days (twice my neighborhood was only outage in all of Houston). Hundreds of us filed complaints with Texas' Public Utility Commission.

I ended up having a whole house surge protector installed on the panel. It kicked back most of the surges. Meanwhile, my neighbors were having ACs, refrigerators, electronics, etc. go out and I decided to add another layer of protections which was surge protectors on both AC units.

The prices P-220 is being quoted seems crazy compared to what I paid in July and August 2023. My whole house surge protector cost $160, and the electrician installed it in less than 5 minutes and only charged $50. The AC unit surge protectors cost $67 each and the electrician installed them 2 weeks later for $50 (5 minutes again). Neighborhood is 5000+ homes and he was installing dozens and dozens per day in the neighborhood so his commute was only a minute or two between jobs.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tatortodd,

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My whole house surge protector cost $160, and the electrician installed it in less than 5 minutes and only charged $50. The AC unit surge protectors cost $67 each and the electrician installed them 2 weeks later for $50 (5 minutes again).

Yes price is super high. Surge protectors are huge profit items for electrical companies. Last two electrical companies I worked for paid $50 for each upsale for a surge.

I very, very rarely do side work, but when I do for friends it's $75 for first half hour. So your electrician charges less than I would charge a good friend.

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Originally posted by Skins2881:
I very, very rarely do side work, but when I do for friends it's $75 for first half hour. So your electrician charges less than I would charge a good friend.

It was definitely a phenomenal price as it was volume business for him. He did the first one, and somebody posted how pleased they were on neighborhood FB page and then his contact info got passed around like wildfire. 5000+ homes getting hammered by surges so he'd spend his Saturdays doing one home after another so in reality was doing six or more $50 installs per hour. For example, on the whole home surge protector he parked his van, installed my neighbors in under 5 minutes, walked 100' to my house, installed mine in under 5 minutes, hopped in his van to drive 2 blocks, rinse & repeat.

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Originally posted by Fenris:
I went whole house.

Same. It’s in the breaker box. Doubled down for all electronics with UPS/surge.

HVAC Contractor installed a surge protector/breaker at the mini-split installed this summer. Call it insurance/peace of mind.

Is is it standard, NOPE. Do you need it, probably not unless your home is the highest point around. Either way, if I were to install one, it would be at your main electrical panel. However, with nearly every freaking thing having stupid sensitive electronics in it today, I can understand why they are making the recommendation.

One thing to note, just because you have one installed, does NOT mean that it will work. If you get a direct strike, chances are it will burn straight through the device and jump to the nearest wire(s). Our church got took a direct strike, blew the cross to pieces, then traveled nearly 150-ft of wiring to every computer and soundboard. Fried everything and they were all on point of use surge arrestors.

You are minimizing risk, NOT eliminating it.

When it comes to surge protection . the last thing you want to do is shop price . Do your homework and learn what the specs mean .