Whats the difference between haveing an appliance on a surge protector and haveing the outlet grounded?

Question

I have a surge protector on my new TV but the outlet is not grounded it just has the two wires... What risk am i taking?

Answer 1

It is totally different, apples and oranges. The only relationship is that some parts of SOME surge protectors utilize the ground wire to do their job of protecting your equipment.

A cheapie surge protector might have only one working part inside it. I have seen many of those. A good one with have several working parts in them. Some of those need the ground to do their job.

It depends on how the surge protector is made. Actually in the really cheap ones it might not make much difference. That is partly because some of them have so few parts that they don't really do hardly anything.

On the really good ones, they will not be as effective as they could be, but they will do some protection. You are a lot better off with a grounded outlet. It provides more protection for surges and for more typical electrical problems.

If you don't have a grounded outlet, you can run a ground wire from your breaker box to your outlets and ground them that way. If isn't pretty, but it does work as well as the proper way.

A surge protector will only protect you against certain maximum surge voltages. Over that and they don't work. Fortunately, most surges are in the range that they can help. NOTHING can stop a direct, or nearly direct lighting strike, so that is not really what you are going for.

The better ones also help with other types of electrical interference that you might encounter. Personally, I use good ones on all my expensive stuff. Anything that costs less than $40 or so is junk in my opinion. Some of the ones in that range are also, but they are grossly overpriced junk.

Tripplite and APC are good brands. I'm not too keen on Belkin, especially their inexpensive ones. Can't think of other good brands, but there are a lot of bad ones out there.

An almost unknown fact is that the active part of a surge supressor often self destructs when it does its job. A really good surge will destroy it. Kind of like the collapsable bumper of a car. It absorbs the shock so the rest of the car doesn't have to. You can replace the bumper, i.e. surge protector much cheaper than the whole car.

Unfortunately, most surge protectors do not indicate when that active part(s) have self destructed. Makes it hard to know when to replace them. Some of the really good units have a light to tell you this. Don't confuse this with other indicator lights on the cheapie units though.

A surge protector is absolutely NOT a ground fault interruptor. They are as different as night and day. You cannot make the blanket statement that a surge protector without a ground is worthless. You can say that it is not able to do all it's job, but some can do a partial job with no ground. If the MOV is between hot and neutral, it will work on hot to neutral surges. This is more complicated than plain electrical theory because it involves electronics theory. They are similar in some cases, but not all.

Answer 2

Non grounded outlets are dangerous because they do not leave a place for electrical surges to go. The surge protector will protect your TV from the surge (maybe, not all work that well) but a lack of proper grounding may cause an arc to jump to something less resistant, like water pipe.

More or less you will be safe as long as there isn't a lightning strike close to your home. I think it's better to be safe than sorry.

Answer 3

You're spinning your wheels!!! A surge protector is a ground fault interrupter device,and it will do absolutely NO GOOD,without the third(ground)wire.