Whole House Surge Protector

It is best to tie to a breaker in the top of the panel if the panel is fed from the top. Tie to a breaker in the bottom if the panel is fed from the bottom. This protects all of the circuits from incoming surges.

No. This device protects your home from power surges to your home from line sources beyond your control. I believe you are tripping the breaker of the circuit you are plugging your vaccumm into. This means that you are drawing more amps than the breaker is rated for, more than likely 15 or 20 amps.( its written on the breaker you have to reset). You may have a faulty appliance or breaker, but chances are your AC and other devices on the circuit are drawing close to the rated amps and your vac's draw trips the breaker. Try plugging the vac into another outlet that is on another circuit, hopefully it's breaker will NOT trip. You could check the draw of your AC, but that takes a little know how and an inductive meter (it should be marked on the unit). I know it may not be possible, but AC's should be on a dedicated circuit...all by itself.Note: typical AC's 5K to 20k BTU's can draw 8 to 15 amps or more) Try to determine what devices are on which circuits and mark the panel as such. Spread the loads out if possible. Good Luck.

I offer the following . . . . 1. Because electricity moves at 186,000 miles per second and most breakers in a box are within 24 inches of each other, even if the MOVs or other surge protection devices react within nano-seconds . . . . Yeah, you get the idea! (11.6 billion inches per second) So, in two nanoseconds or two billionths of a second, the spike and rush current can travel the entire length of the electrical panel. Really! 2. All of the single phase legs are in parallel within inches of each other, as well as the 240 volt connections, and the intervening electrical buss resistance is extremely small, and surge currents can be huge, so I suppose mounting the protector closest to the Mains input would make a little sense. However, that only makes a difference if you are only protecting against surge sources from outside of your house! What if you are trying to protect against internal sources, such as air conditioner compressor spikes; then logic would suggest you mount the device as close as possible to the source. 3. This device's surge rating is just over 2,800 joules and a large surge will exceed that energy level and burn out the device, at which time it needs to be replaced. BTW, I have surge protector strips rated at almost twice this (4300 joules), just to protect my home audio/video equipment. I believe in the distributed protection scheme which places surge protection strips on all solid state equipment (including devices with digital control panels, such as microwave ovens, refrigerators, freezers, toaster ovens, toasters, floor fans, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dryers and most modern appliances), and at all surge source sites that employ motors or compressors whose huge inductive kick produces large voltage spikes. Devices such as refrigerators, freezers, air conditioner, and large fans all produce spikes when turning on and off. I have over a dozen protection units throughout my house (2,000-4,000 joules each). Considering an even distribution across the two power legs, I have an average of roughly 15,000 joules across each leg. Plus, I don't have all of my eggs in one basket! Also, remember that the surge protectors are all in parallel, so they help protect each other by sharing the excess energy of the voltage spikes, thereby prolonging the life of all of them, very important. At $30 a pop, it is indeed cheap insurance, considering a new major appliance cost $500-$800 dollars. Adding one of these whole house devices to the main power panel would add to that, especially for outside sourced surges.

To correctly install this breaker is must be hooked p to a double breaker which means that the breaker attached to both hot strips in the breaker panel. Just like any other 240 volt breaker you might have in your panel such a maybe a dryer breaker oven etc. It covers both 120 volt and 240 volt lines in the panel installed.