Protecting The Ckt Board On A New Furnace From Lightning & Volt. Transients: How ?

Hello:

I recently had installed a new hot air furnace, that also has an Evaporator section in it for the house air conditioning.

Last night, a thunder storm passed thru the area. Nothing really major; have certainly seen worse. A bit of lightning, etc.

Lights flickered for a few seconds. This is the first time since the new installation that we had this type of storm.

Anyway, the main circuit board in the furnace fried.

Surprisingly, nothing else in the house suffered any damage, whatsoever. Even the PC's still work. Of course most of the other items in the house are plugged into power extension strips with overvoltage and spike protection; perhaps this saved them ? Hard to know for sure, though.

The furnace (110 V) is, of course, hard wired to the house wiring via a dedicated circuit breaker.

My question is:

Would really hate to have it happen again. Is there any kind of circuit breaker we can change to that has this spike and overvoltage protection ?

Or, what might you folks recommend ?

Much thanks, Bob

Reply to
Robert11
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Even garage door openers recommend surge protection now days. Lost one last Monsoon season.

I have a whole house protector( circuit breaker type) and a point of use for every piece of electronic equipment that I own. I am following IEEE standards of surge protection. Just make sure that the "let through" of the whole house unit is less than the max of the point of use device. Then replace the units every couple of years. The way they are tested is once. One protective event is all you really get for sure. It is unknown if the MOV's are good for second event.

Oh ya, NOTHING will guarantee complete protection. I have replaced electrical distribution systems in buildings because of a strike in the parking lot.

The $XXk worth of protection is worthless in my mind. As I do not know how to prove that the device I bought did not do its job.

Reply to
SQLit

In addition to the whole house protector SQLit mentioned, make sure your ductwork is properly bonded.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

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