FirstSurge Pro 140kA Whole House Surge Protection Device

This is a nice product and will provide surge protection to my whole house. However be sure to also order a 3/4" Frigid Chase Conduit Nipple, a 20A 2-pole breaker that matches your breaker box brand and graphite or other anti-friction material since you will need them to install this product. I had to run to Home Depot after taking delivery to get these. Before ordering check where you can install this. My panel was too close to a wall on the right side and all my punch-outs on the left side either had conduit thru them or were to too close to the 2x4 that mounted the panel so I had to mount it from the panel bottom. Make sure your panel has room for a two pole breaker or you will have to add the leads to an existing 20A 2-pole breaker.

installed this SPD myself, with no problems but don't try it if you have not worked on Power Distribution Panels. Biggest problem was finding room for a circuit breaker in my panel. Had to move some breakers around. After wiring and checking connections I flipped the new breaker on and was rewarded with two bright green LEDs. (Normal Operation)

I went with the "Pro" unit since it looked like we were border line on the map shown by Siemens. Also I chose to recess the unit since it was quite large and would appear intrusive in our closet. The install went fairly easy and those LED lights are bright enough to provide light. Follow the directions that come with the "Pro" and I believe you will be happy with it. I used separate 20 amp breaker and tried to minimize my wire run length, that took some breaker swapping. All in all I did the install and built the trim around the hole in the dry wall in about half a day. That was after 4 trips to Home Depot for electrical fittings :)

This item was very easy to install. Two black wires into the 20a double breaker and the white and green into the side grounding bars. We took a surge hit in Nov16' that took out about $4k in electronics. Hope this will take care of that in the future. We also installed the phone/dsl surge and the coax surge protectors. Most of the equipment was on surge strips, but that didn't protect the stuff. I installed this with the Siemens face plate. The face plate needs to have it's hole stamped bigger. I made it work, but the mounting bolts are about an 1/8" gap behind the plate and the surge protector doesn't fit flush in the faceplate.

I've been meaning to install a whole house surge suppressor for a while now but just haven't gotten around to it. So, when I saw this come up for review I grabbed it. I'm not an electrician but I have enough experience working inside my breaker panel that I'm confident this shouldn't be a difficult install. My area of the country doesn't see a lot of devastating lightning strikes but I have had one hit close enough to my house that it blew out some of my networking equipment. It was about $400 worth of stuff that needed replacing and I'm not anxious to do it again. Nothing will stop a powerful nearby lightning strike, but hopefully this will buy me a little bit of protection, even if it only prevents surges coming from the utility's systems. This was shipped to me in a very non-descript brown cardboard box, with yellow tape wrapped around the wiring and the unit that read "120v". The manual looks like it was printed out on a laser printer, folded in half, and shoved in the box. So, I have a feeling I was sent one of their very early versions of this product. It doesn't have the glamour that most consumer products would have, a shiny box with glossy owner's manual. There are ZERO instructions on how it should be installed, so I researched the requirements of other similar Type 2 brands/models to see which were similar. It turns out they all basically install in the same way. Looking at the wiring this unit will protect up to 2 separate phases even though the label on the unit itself describes 3 phase protection. I don't see how that would be possible since it only has a ground (green), neutral (white), and 2 hot (black) wires exiting. Two hot wires to support both 120v phases that come into almost all homes. Maybe the label is used on more than one model protector? I see no reason why you couldn't use this on a single phase system as well though. Two protect two phase systems you will need at a minimum a 20 amp 2 pole circuit breaker and that breaker should be installed as close to the main breaker as possible with the wiring going to the protector kept as short as possible. One black wire goes to each connection on the breaker. In other words, don't connect both black wires to only one of the poles of the circuit breaker. Sadly, installing the new 20 amp breaker close to the main breaker won't be possible for me. All of my existing circuit breakers were installed from the top down when the house was built in 2009 and the wiring in the panel will be too short to relocate them. It looks like I will have to place the new breaker closer to the bottom of the panel which is not ideal. I used a 20 amp double pole Siemens breaker since my panel is made by Siemens and so is the surge protector. I initially thought I could mount this inside my breaker panel but now that I have it in my hands I don't think that will be possible since it is quite large. In fact, I think it is quite a bit larger than any of its competitors. I measure it out to be 8.25" wide, 3.5" deep, and 3" tall. It looks like I will need to mount this below my breaker panel. To make matters more difficult, my main breaker panel was flush mounted with the drywall in my garage so that means I am going to have to cut open some drywall in order to run a short length of electrical conduit from the panel to the surge suppressor. In the end it's probably better to have it mounted outside the panel because you can see if it is working just by looking at it, and if/when it fails the audible alarm will be easier to hear. That being said, if this were smaller it would be so much easier to install. The female threaded end accepts a 1" pipe thread and from the center of the fitting to the bottom of the unit measures 1.5". This is supposed to be a standard NEMA 4 package. Now that I have the protector installed it seems to be working pretty well. I mounted it to a piece of 1/2 plywood which in turn is mounted to the studs on either side of the breaker panel. I didn't feel comfortable just having it hang from the metal conduit or attaching it to the drywall. Lot's power can move through this thing so better to make sure it's secure. I used a couple of threaded conduit elbows and a short length of 3/4" conduit to run the wiring directly to a knockout plug on the bottom of the breaker panel. I'm not an electrician so if you're not comfortable working inside your main breaker panel I highly recommend hiring one to do it for you. You'll notice I had to sacrifice and install the breaker at the bottom of the panel. This is due to the fact that I had to mount the surge protector below the panel and because I don't think I have enough length on my existing circuit wiring to be able to slide everything down two slots. When powered on, the A and C phase indicator lights are lit up green and they are really bright. I can only assume it is working because I don't have the type of equipment needed to put a high surge through this unit. Overall, it seems really well built. I just wish it could fit in the panel an that the instructions were better.

When I saw that the FirstSurge Pro 140kA Whole House Surge Protection Device (SPD) was available I grabbed it immediately. The modern home has so many devices that depend on electronics to operate that not having a simple whole home surge protector is like playing with fire. It's cheap insurance, and when the fact that Siemens provides a 10 year and up to $25,000 ($1500 per device) warranty is taken into consideration, it's a no brainer. One thing that was not stated in the installation directions was the recommendation to install the SPD as close to the incoming electrical lines as possible. The reason being that the incoming surge will see the SPD immediately and be safely rerouted, and as a result it would not fry anything down line. I called Siemens' Customer Support line about this omission. The gentlemen on the line knew exactly what I was talking about, however, he said that if there were no free spaces for the SPD in front of the existing breakers, that a spot toward the bottom should work fine if a surge ever occurred. Well, needless to say I made sure that the SPD was installed in the top spot so that, if a surge were to ever occur, it would be safely taken care of before it put an early end to any of my devices or appliances. Currently, the 2 green LED lights are shining brightly next to my electrical panel. Hopefully I will never need the FirstSurge Pro 140kA Whole House Surge Protection Device, but it is there just in case. I would definitely recommend it to any friend or family member.

We don't usually get lightning here, but have lots of windstorms with downed lines, so I wanted a whole house surge suppressor to protect my many gadgets from power surges. The FirstSurge Pro FS140 is a large, heavy duty surge protection device. It has a 10 year warranty and a connected equipment warranty of $1500/item and $25,000 total. There are 3 indicator lights and an audible alarm when attention is required. The four hookup wires are 36" long 10 gauge stranded copper. I used a 3/4" conduit nipple to mount it to a knockout on the bottom of my breaker box and connected it to a dedicated 20 amp breaker mounted adjacent to the main breaker as recommended. Installation took about 15 minutes.

It arrived quickly and was easy to install. After losing AC sytem components to power company power surges with expensive repairs, I now feel my AC System, Stove, Refrigerator, Washer, and Dryer are protected more than they were. In abouth 14 months, it will be saving money, rather than paying the power company to provide similar protection in monthly charges. The green lights and audible alarm also provide peace of mind.

Quick shipping. Easy to install. Now I have peace of mind, after losing all my appliances to a power surge. Never again!!