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The more electronics you plug into the wall, the more you should be paying attention to the quality of your power. Spikes and surges can zap electronics and damage TVs, appliances, computers, and other sensitive devices, but most people have no protection against these surges. And did I mention lightning hitting a power line? That's why the Top Greener wall outlet with built-in surge protection is so darn smart: Replace a regular wall outlet with one of these, and you'll protect any and every device you plug in.
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ replaced one of his outlets with a Top Greener Surge Protection Outlet and found it a reasonably DIY task. More importantly, his electronics are now protected. Here's how the install went...
Learn more at https://www.topgreener.com/
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0:00
An outlet with a built-in surge protector? Let's check this out
0:04
Dave Taylor here and as you can see I'm in my kitchen
0:15
Now my kitchen has a GFCI. That's this plug and that's a ground fault circuit interrupter
0:22
Now a GFCI is really helpful but on this plug I tend to plug in a lot of electronics
0:29
Everyone charges stuff and when we have exotic electronics they often end up plugged in there
0:34
And here's the thing, a GFCI protects you from ground faults, hence its name
0:39
And a ground fault is when there's an inadvertent contact between an energized conductor and ground or equipment frame
0:46
Right? Bad news. But it doesn't protect you from surges. And a surge is when you suddenly get too much voltage down the line
0:56
And this can fry your electronics. This can shorten the life of your electronics
1:01
It's bad news. So what you see a lot is people will use big external devices that are surge protectors
1:08
I don't want to do that. So I got this. This is the Top Greener Surge Protector Receptacle Outlet with the friendly name of TGTRSS215R
1:21
We'll just call it surge protector. And it's pretty cool. So as I open it up, let me get my knife
1:28
As I open it up and hopefully don't cut myself, let me tell you a little bit about it
1:33
So let me just actually focus on the cutting part first. Okay. We have it open
1:38
Now this is a surge protector and it also is a child safe design
1:43
So what Top Greener does is they have these outlets that are designed so that if you try to plug in foreign objects
1:52
something that's other than a regular plug, it actually won't work. So this is what it looks like
1:59
So let me take it out of the box. And it is, as you would expect, just basically a regular looking power outlet
2:06
So it just has just a couple of wires. It's super easy to work with one on each side, one on the bottom and instructions that tell you how to do that
2:16
And because it's a different shape than a lot of plugs, it actually comes with one of these
2:21
which is important because like if you can see back there and I'll give you some shots, some photos as I go
2:28
But that's an old style outlet. So the wall plate is the wrong shape for this
2:32
So this is like I said, it's a built in surge protector
2:37
It's child safe design. It's self grounding, which is cool. And it's up to 900 joules. That's how much it can actually protect
2:45
And it's 15 amp, 125 volts. And let's see. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually switch over and I'm going to give you like a narrated photo tour
2:57
because you don't want to watch me do this. This could be painful
3:01
But basically it's going to be pretty easy. I'm going to drop the power on that circuit
3:05
You always want to do that. And interestingly, that is not on my GFCI
3:11
So I can't just pop that one out and then have that be dead. I have to go out to my main breaker board. It's all right
3:18
And make sure that outlet is dead and then I can switch it for this
3:22
And I'll show you that as a sequence of photos. And then we'll come back and we'll look and see what's going on
3:27
So, like I said, this will give us some nice surge protection
3:31
So let me go ahead and switch to that and we'll come right back
3:35
Here's how my outlet looks when I started. And of course, you pop off the wall plate
3:39
I've already dropped power. So now I'm going to pull the outlet out of the wall
3:45
You can see there are four wires going into it, two black, white and an unshielded line, which is actually ground
3:52
So I unscrew all four of those. Then I get the new outlet and simply match things up
3:59
So ground, then white to white and then both blacks go on to the black receptacle side
4:06
Now, all I have to do is put it back into the wall. Not so easy because there's a lot of wires back there
4:13
But finally, I succeed. Add the wall plate and done. It worked pretty easily. The biggest problem I had was that there's so many wires in that back wall that it was really hard to get the outlet to fit in
4:27
Because obviously it's a lot bigger than the old one. So I struggled. Finally got that to work. Thank goodness
4:33
And now it's working. Now, you'll notice in a couple of the photos at the very end, I had brought power back up to test it before I put it into the wall
4:42
And that gave me a green light. Now, the green light means that it's protected
4:47
The light below it would be red and that would mean that it's not grounded. That would be bad. We don't want that
4:53
So the fact that it's there and it's obviously working, I have things plugged into it and they're working fine
4:59
And I have that little green light and that tells me that I am protected from surges. And that's exactly what I want
5:05
So that's great. So really, this isn't really designed to be in kitchens, to be totally honest
5:11
I think I'm probably a little atypical that I have so many devices plugged in in the kitchen
5:16
But generally, this is something you're probably going to want in a living room or an entertainment center, or this would be great for a home office or something like that
5:24
So, like I said, 900 joules of protection, 15 amps, 125 volts. This is just going to replace a regular outlet, but give you surge protection
5:33
Total no brainer. Now, before I get to the price, let me ask if you can go ahead and click on that subscribe button
5:39
Really appreciate when you do that. OK, cool. Now, this is the Top Greener Surge Protector Receptacle Outlet known as TGTRSS215R
5:53
And it is $22.99 at Amazon.com. And I would say if you're reasonably handy with a screwdriver and you know how to drop your circuit so that you bring down the current, you can do this yourself
6:05
If not, get an electrician to have it installed. Either way, it's a really nice upgrade, particularly if you're a home office or entertainment center or something
6:12
So, I say check it out. So, that's it. And I'm going to go back and reassemble my kitchen now that I have all the power back on
6:19
Which means I'll catch you in my next video. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs
#Electronics & Electrical
#Home Improvement
#Home Safety & Security