EATON CHSPT2ULTRA Ultimate Surge Protection 3rd Edition, 2.38 Length, 5.25 Width 7.5 Height

Easy to install and offers insurance against an electrical surge that could take out home electronics.

I am by no means an electrician, just a typical do-it-yourselfer that watches way too many YouTube videos! As a precaution, if you are at all uncomfortable working inside your load center, hire an electrician. At the very least make sure to use a voltage checker and/or multimeter to make sure you are not working around hot circuits. I even used insulated electricians tools as an added precaution. Be that as it may, I purchased a home back in April. Its 114 years old and the second floor electrical is ungrounded and the majority of it is still knob and tube. Rather than shell out thousands for dollars for a complete rewire, I have been slowly updating what my skill level allows me to. Essentially, I am replacing existing ungrounded three-prong outlets with GFCI units. All of the electrical on the first floor was updated at some point and it is all grounded, so I am able to protect my electronics and appliances with typical plug-in surge protectors. Since everything on the second floor is so old and not grounded, surge protectors wont do much for equipment protection. Enter the Eaton whole house surge protector. Installation was actually a lot faster than I anticipated. Once I turned the power off at the main breaker, I simply popped the cover off of my load center (its a Square D QO), and moved some existing breakers around to make room for a dedicated 50 amp breaker per Eatons recommendations. This granted me the opportunity to install the 50 amp breaker as the first breaker in the load center, enabling surge protection for all downstream circuits (including the sub panel which feeds my kitchen). With the breaker installed, I then looked for a suitable knock-out on the load center for the surge protector. Now, this is why I only rated the unit four out of five stars. Regardless of where I chose to mount and install the surge protector, there was always an issue with the included pigtail being too short to reach either the 50 amp breaker and/or the neutral and ground bars. The instructions inform the user that for maximum effectiveness of the unit, the wires need to be installed as short and as straight as possible. In my situation, this was not the case. While not ideal, what I ended up doing was mounting the surge protector on the side of load center which allowed me to wire it into the neutral and ground bars with no issue. At the same time, this particular side of the load center was less crowded and I didnt have a lot of existing wiring that I had to work around, which was a huge plus. Unfortunately, this left me with two hot wires, the red and the black, being too short to wire into the breaker. I hated to do it and I loathe to disclose it, but I had to buy a couple of spools of red and black wire from a big box home improvement store and splice them into the surge protectors pigtail in order for me to wire it into the circuit breaker. What made it an even harder pill to swallow was that where the dedicated circuit was installed, there was a ton of existing wiring and not a lot of space to work in. So, I had to make the splices with butt connectors which make the whole install look like excrement. As a precaution I wrapped the splices in electrical tape, too. Once I had everything wired up, I reinstalled the load center cover and flipped the breaker. Voila! I had power once again and both lights on the surge protector lit up, indicating that it is functioning correctly. I have had a few thunderstorms since the installation, and the surge protector is still going strong. At some point in time I am going to clean up the wiring in the load center and go for a more professional-looking set up for the surge protector, but for now it works and serves its purpose. Failing that, I may even bring in a professional just to look everything over and see what they recommend.

Installed easily enough...although I would strongly suggest that EATON pre-solder the leads. Stranded wire does not work well for crimping into a breaker connector. Once I soldered them everything worked well for the installation. Im counting on it to protect things from the frequent surges/drops we get here in Florida every day when the afternoon lightning storm passes through. Ill update it to a 5-star rating if we make it through the summer with no household damages from the lightning and other outages.

The best of the best

I needed an electrician to put in but an hour later and I’m good

Works as it should.

Had an electrician install to code. Delivery was great. This does not eliminate minute surges. You still have to protect delicate electronics in the house with surge protection. BTW, IF YOU DO GET A LARGE SURGE, THIS IS A ONE TIME PROTECTION AND IT WILL NEED TO BE REPLACED.

Hopefully It will stop the electric demon from possessing my electronics and letting the Gremlins infest my house. So far good. I will let you know when I take a direct lightning strike.

This was pretty easy to install. I used 1 pre-existing hole and drilled another so that it is at least held on by two screws. The wires are a little thin and a little short if you ask me...especially if you are connecting this to a 50-amp breaker. However, they were just long enough for me to not need to add any more wire. I cut all but the ground wire shorter for the fastest surge response possible. I didn’t drill holes in the panel cover so I can’t see the green lights to tell if it is still working.

We have frequent thunder and lightning storms so we have lost a few items due to power surges. Our electrician recommended this to prevent us from losing future appliances or surge protectors. This product is supposed to prevent larger variances so you still may want to have surge protectors to protect from the smaller variances.