Power bars with Surge protection or circuit breakers?

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earhtmother

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Mar 22, 2010
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We live in a rural area where power outages, esp in winter can be frequent?
Having lost more than my fair share of heaters & lights because of this I recently replaced all my aquariums household power bars with contractor grade ones with circuit breakers. Lost ANOTHER heater during a storm last week & am now wondering if I should have gone with bars with surge protection instead. Before I replace the power bars AGAIN can anyone with more electrical knowledge than I give me their thoughts/ideas. The heaters are all submersibles 200 or 300 watt so replacing them is a $50 a peice expense I would prefer to avoid[emoji20]
 
See if you can find a battery backup or inverter that you can hook up to a car battery. Is it the jolt that kills the heater? Then absolutely get a surge protector.
 
we are in a new wave weather you buy from a store or on line a heater or other equipment , buy the extended warranty it will cover anything that happens to the equipment that the standard warranty don't cover both accidental breakage or from power surge ect . it's well worth that extra 4 or 5 bucks to have a piece of mind

most retailers now offer this option and it really pays for itself , I purchase this extra warranty on all electronic purchases weather aquarium or household related , I can say by my experience with these warranty's they saved me 100's of dollars on replacements
 
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If you're having trouble with stuff getting fried, make sure the power strip you pick up has a fuse or circuit breaker in it. They're not going to run you much more than a standard strip, but if there's a surge it's much more likely that the fuse/breaker will blow and the power will be cut to the strip before it can fry your heaters and filter pumps. If you can't physically get at the fuse or breaker in the strip, I wouldn't go for that model because I'm skeptical.

And be mindful that some will offer pseudo-insurance warranties, but I wouldn't put a lot of stock in equipment replacement guarantees that most companies make (seems mostly like marketing gimmicks if you read the fine print). You can find plenty of terrible customer service stories of all manner of company not living up to them if you search a bit online.

Edit: not a direct response to 54seaweed, I'm talking about equipment replacement guarantees that power strip manufacturers make
 
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I have contractor bars with circuit breakers in them but since I still lost a heater was wondering if a surge protected one would have have been a better choice as I am unsure of the difference between circuit breaker & surge protection
 
Contractor bars with circuit breakers are actually meant to protect your larger power system from an overdraw, whereas surge protectors protect from power spikes. It's an issue of flow direction.

The surge protector guts are consumable, though, so each power spike will use them up a bit more. If your spikes are really severe, you may want to look into a power conditioner or power conditioning backup.
 
Good Surge Protectors

If you want to protect your electronic equipment from power surges then look at some high end surge protectors like ZeroSurge units.

https://zerosurge.com/plug-in-products-solutions/

They cost more money $150+ but save money in the long run as they last forever and really do their job. I use them them on all my computers and other expensive electronics.
 
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