In today’s video, Randy talks you through some of the basics of surge protectors, and explains why he highly regards Power Watchdog line of surge protectors from Hughes. https://hughesautoformers.com/power-watchdog-smart-surge-protectors/

Transcript:

Hey, guys, Randy with Pete’s RV TV today. Today, I want to talk a little bit about surge protection. So, something that you guys may not know about me is I’m actually an electrician by trade. So, every RV dealer has a guy like me who has been around for a million years and he is kind of the fix it guy or the go-to guy, where the hard questions usually gravitate towards that gentleman. I’m that guy at Pete’s RV. So, they’d be coming to me. But the thing that I bring to the table as I just mentioned is I used to build custom homes and I am an electrician by trade. So, when it comes to the electrical side of things, I really know what I’m talking about from my former life. So, I’m the guy that they bring in when they talk about surge protection and what kind of surge protection that we’re going to carry as a dealer group.

I’ve played with them all. I’ve played with all the big names out there, and we have ended up with the Hughes Watchdog. Hughes makes an incredible product. I’ve actually met with the owner of Hughes, gentleman named Pat. He’s actually a friend of mine now. And the product that he brought to the table I felt was so far superior to the other stuff out there, we took it on. And as I learned more and more about it, I just kept knowing that I made the right choice because it is a great product. One of the things that the Hughes Watchdog does is it protects us from surge. So, if there is a lightning strike down the road or nearby, this is going to protect anything that’s coming in on those negative lines, on the ground wires, or the high voltage is coming over on the positive side of things. Nothing will protect you from a direct lightning strike, but if there’s something nearby and you can be protected from it, the Hughes Watchdog is definitely going to do that.

One of the really cool things about the Hughes Watchdog is protecting you on those surges, is it actually the Joules, the absorption material that takes those hits is replaceable, where with the competitors, it is not. Once those Joules of that absorption portion of the surge protector is worn out, you need to replace the whole detector. Where this guy here, we can just replace the absorption of the Joules portion of it. The Power Watchdog is going to run at equal or better than its competition out there. When it comes to absorption, they’ve actually just changed. So, depending on when you purchased, they’re offering a little bit more than they once did, which again is in line or better than the competitors out there.

The other thing that the Hughes Watchdog does for us with the EPO, emergency power off, and this is probably going to come into play more often than we would with the typical surge on it, is low voltage, high voltage, reverse polarity or no ground. It is going to protect us from all that. All very important things. This guy will shut power off if it doesn’t like something. So, at 103 volts, so say on a busy weekend at a campground, we can see very low voltage. Everybody gets to the campground, everybody throws on all their air conditioners or electric hot water heater. The griddles go on, the coffee makers, everything that you need to go camping that we brought from home, we bring to the campground and we turn it on when we get there, which can actually put campgrounds into a low voltage situation or a brownout.

When I say brownout, I mean below 103 volts. So, electricity is an amazing thing. Electricity will still function at low voltage. It will still pass at low voltage, but at low voltage it creates high amperage. High amperage creates high heat. High heat will prematurely wear out your electrical components, especially your inductive loads like your air conditioner motors and things like that, things that are very expensive to replace. So, with the EPO here, it will protect you from that. It will actually shut power off, not allow power to pass if it doesn’t like something, or it’s in a spot where we feel that it’s damaging your coach. When we can throw this thing into alarm here, also has Bluetooth, so it’ll go to your phone. So, if you’re within Bluetooth range of the Watchdog, it will come right to your phone.

I’m going to hook this device up to my phone right here. And if you can zoom in on this, Cam, we are going to see the incoming voltage on both legs of that 50 amp Watchdog. I’m not pulling any amps right now, because I’ve got nothing plugged into it. And the frequency in North America is 60 hertz, so we’re running right there where we’re supposed to be on that. Let’s throw this thing into an alarm so we can see it come up. So, I have just removed the ground from the Watchdog. We can see the Watchdog is turned red, but immediately it has hit my phone as missing ground. And has actually shut power off going through the Watchdog, so no power is passing to the camper right now. And I have an alert on my phone within Bluetooth range saying what’s going on.

And it will work for you whether you’re in Bluetooth range or not, but it will tell you what’s going on if you’ve got it tied to your personal device. Once power has been restored or it likes what’s going back on, in about 90 seconds it will just make sure that everything is safe and then it’ll allow power to pass again. So, that’s how the EPO works. No ground can put you into a hot skin situation. So, very dangerous situation. And again, why it doesn’t want to pass, high voltage above 132 volts, doesn’t want to see that. It will shut power off. Low voltage below that 103 that I referred to earlier, it’s going to shut it off.

So, this thing is going to work continuously for you to protect your investment and make sure that you don’t end up in those service bays, which we all know are a little bit cumbersome to get into and sometimes take longer than what we’d like to get back out of them. So, I recommend the Hughes Watchdog for any camper out there. I personally like the hardwire version, because it is working for you all the time. It is wired permanently into your camper. It can’t be stolen. It is not in the elements. It can’t be damaged for transport. So, the hardwire version would be my recommendation and definitely the Hughes Watchdog. Thanks for watching Pete’s RV TV with Randy today. I look forward to seeing you on the road.

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Pete’s RV Center is an exceptional dealership group serving the United States and Canada since 1952. With multiple locations, Pete’s RV provides sales, service, parts, accessories, and education to our community of RVers all across North America.

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