Do surge protectors need to be grounded to work?

Question

My (old) house has no grounding wires so grounding is not an option.

Answer 1

Yes and no.  A surge that comes in on one line (like lightning hitting one leg of a power line) will be handled by shunting to the other line if the protector is not grounded.  Normally, it is much better to have the unit grounded so all possible combinations of surge can be handled.  

  When I lived in an old house, I installed grounded outlets just for the computer and from the ground s***w I ran a green insulated wire along the baseboard to a cold water pipe in the bathroom which I checked for uninterrupted connection to earth ground.

Answer 2

Whole-house protection with proper grounding and end-use protection for each piece of equipment will give you the best possible protection available.

Surge protection devices need a path to ground to work properly. The home must have a grounding point for the surge suppressor to send the overvoltage. The National Electric Code (NEC), article 800 states:

"All power, cable and telephone grounds MUST be bonded to the same grounding electrode system entering a building. This prevents potential ground voltage differences that may be seen across data, power, and telephone lines connected to sensitive electronics."

If you have multiple ground points, these will have to be brought to NEC standards prior to the installation of the surge protection equipment. Improper ground bonding may result in the voiding of applicable warranties.

Three-prong to two-prong adapters must not be used with any surge protection equipment.

Grounded outlets were not required until the mid 70s. Your home may have been built with two-prong outlets, and a previous well-intentioned homeowner may have replaced the old two-prong outlets with newer three-prong version. However, unless he installed a ground wire, it is still a non-grounded outlet. Outlet testers are an inexpensive way to see if the outlet is wired properly. A tester can be purchased at most hardware and home centers. When a GFCI Adapter is used the diagnostic light will still indicate "no ground" but usage will be safe.

http://www.sensorland.com/HowPage041.htm...

Answer 3

No, because the surge protector acts like fuse. It shuts down as soon as it detects a surge in the power. You can ground your house to the cold water pipe, but that will not effect the performance of the surge protector.

Answer 4

no it doesn't

Answer 5

Surge suppreors work by shunting the high voltage - shorting it in essence.  They do no work by shutting down as suggested above, that would never be fast enough.  After they have performed the shunt, the better ones will shut down.

The best surge suppressors will provide a shunt between each pair of wires: Hot - Netural, Hot - Ground, Netrual - Ground.  These ones will work without the ground connected.

Some cheep ones may only shunt the hot to ground.  These ones will not work without the ground connected.

Answer 6

NO