Protect Your Landscape Lighting Investment – Install Surge Protection
Central Florida, specifically the Tampa Bay area, is known as “The Lightning Capital of the United States” because of the frequency of lightning strikes the area sees. A lightning strike is an electric discharge between the atmosphere and the earth. These strikes carry a very high level of energy and can cause extreme amounts of damage in your home – especially to your electronics and to your landscape lighting system (even more so if it is LED). It does not take a direct strike to cause issues or failures because the energy from a strike can carry up to 2 miles through the grid.
Why you should add surge protection
It is important that home and property owners add surge protection within their houses to provide protection from lightning and other electric surge issues. It is important to have surge protection added to your main panel but you should also have your electronic devices protected with inline protectors. You should have your outdoor landscape lighting system protected also, whether it is on a branch circuit or at the box for 120v system, as well as a surge arrester on the 12v secondary side of a system.
The LED’s that illuminate and emit light in our new outdoor lighting systems are small electronic components, with diodes, drivers, circuit boards, regulators, and more. Each of these components is very susceptible to surge and lighting strikes. Automation devices are also very beneficial when it comes to protecting your lighting system from surge protection. On all of our new systems that we install we protect these highly sensitive electric components by using surge suppressors and surge arresters at the main panels and at outlets. We are also adding surge protection to existing LED systems.
If you want to review surge protection on your outdoor lighting system, please contact Decorating Elves at 727-474-2628 and we will schedule an appointment.