Albany Whole-Home Surge Protection

Protect Your Home in Upstate New York; Call Crisafulli Bros. Plumbing & Heating Contractors, Inc.

As a homeowner, you are probably all too familiar with the fact that immense damage can happen in the blink of an eye. There may be no better example of this than a power surge. Electricity not only makes our homes more comfortable, but it also makes our lives possible. Because of this dependence, a power surge can truly be one of the most difficult disasters to overcome. However, you can protect yourself from this risk with a whole-home surge protection system from the Albany electricians at Crisafulli Bros. Plumbing & Heating Contractors, Inc.! We offer quality products and world-class installation to ensure you and your property are safe in the event of a disaster. When you’re looking for peace of mind, look to us to get the job done.

Learn more about installing a whole-home surge protector for your property! Dial (518) 868-0494 today and speak with a member of our experienced team at Crisafulli Bros. Plumbing & Heating Contractors, Inc. Emergency service is available.

What Is a Power Surge?

A power surge occurs when a sudden spike in voltage and current travels through your home’s electrical system. This typically happens when some part of the electrical grid that regulates and controls your power either fails entirely or sustains serious damage due to wear and tear or excessive strain, preventing it from being able to properly balance and regulate power to the stable levels we expect it to be at.

To make it easier to understand, think of your standard garden hose. When attached to a normal spigot, your hose is just fine, as it can handle the volume of water and pressure it provides. However, should you attach that same hose to a fire hydrant, the hose itself would quickly fail and fall apart due to the excessive pressure and volume pushed through it. A power surge is essentially the same—a huge, sudden burst of power that can wipe out large swaths of your electrical system simply because they aren’t built to handle it.

A power surge can cause an incredible amount of damage, including:

• Melted electrical wires
• Burned up receptacles
• Damaged switches
• Melted circuit breakers
• Permanently-damaged electrical equipment

There are a number of reasons a power surge can happen, but by far the two most common are excessive strain on the electrical grid and severe weather causing damage to electrical infrastructure. During heavy-usage times like a hot summer afternoon, the demand placed on the grid from everyone running their air conditioners can cause important components to falter. Likewise, high winds, severe thunderstorms, and lightning strikes can also send power surging through electrical lines, damaging homes for miles around.

How Surge Protectors Work

If you take a close look at your water heater, you will notice one important safety feature typically found at the top of the tank: a pressure release valve. Rapidly building pressure can be extremely dangerous, as it can cause tanks to not only leak, but explode if it were to cause a sudden drastic material failure. A pressure-release valve prevents this by opening if the pressure inside the tank reaches levels that can be considered dangerous, giving the pressure a way to escape. This is the same principle of how a surge protection system works for your electrical system.

Surge protectors are devices that constantly monitor the current and voltage flowing through an electrical circuit. If too much current goes through a circuit, your surge protector switches and provides an alternate path for the excess power to escape through, such as your ground circuit. This both stops the power flow through your main circuit, protecting anything plugged into it, but also helps prevent potentially serious damage to your electrical system itself.

Protect your property from a power surge by letting the team at Crisafulli Bros. Plumbing & Heating Contractors, Inc. outfit you with a whole-home surge protector! Contact us today.