Do you need a surge protector at home?

Is residential power any safer than campground power?

Mike,

I saw your video on surge protectors this morning. My question is...my RV is parked at home in my carport and hooked up to a 30 amp outlet. I have an good surge protector for when I'm camping, but in 4 years have never hooked it up at home. Is that reasonable or should I be using it 24/7? Thanks for your help. - Jean.P

Dear Jean.P

Well, I’ll tell you what I know. Residential power can fail as well as campground power. Just a year ago my dad’s house developed a loose neutral between the power pole and his service panel. As the wind blew the house lights would blink really bright, burning some of them out. But the expensive thing was this over-voltage surge burned out his furnace controller, which cost him $700 to repair. But the furnace ut repair guy never checked the voltage, so they burned out a second controller a few months later. Yup, not under warranty so it cost another $700. Ugh!

On my own house two years ago there was a loose hot connection at the power pole when a tree branch blew against it in a wind storm. In that case we lost one leg of power, so half the house had no electricity. No damage, but a pain to get repaired.

And last summer I watched a lighting bolt hit in my driveway just 10 feet away from the screened porch where my wife and I were eating King Crab legs. It did blow up a small television, my cable modem, and a few other electrical items. But lucky for me, I had really excellent surge protection on my test bench and all computers. So they survived the hit.

My opinion is that the US electrical grid is pretty sketchy. It’s well over 100 years old, and most of it is up in the air where it’s susceptible to lightning, tornadoes, floods, fires and all manners of mayhem. If I were you, I would ALWAYS use a surge protector on my RV, no matter where it’s plugged into shore power.