My friends' husband is an Electrician, and he said we all should have a surge protector placed in our home and installed before the electrical box in your home, in order to protect all those electrical appliances we own:

Your new stove alone if it has all the computerized buttons has a motherboard that costs approx. $500 (Canadian) to have replaced.

These are some of those items in your home that can be roasted by a surge:
stove, fridge, dishwasher, washer, dryer, microwave, televisions, workout equipment, water heaters, furnaces, computers-printers, sewing machines, shop tools, hair applicances, clocks, radios, and so much more ...

Our Local City building inspectors, now require all new homes have these surge protectors installed.

We had this done and the bill was less than $200. Well worth the price to put out - then you don't have that worry.

I had 2 of my computers on a surge protector and when the lightning hit them fried everything

I should clarify, the surge protector needs to be installed by an electrician, as it will be installed between the hydro powerline that comes into your house and the electrical breaker box that turns on/off the power in your residence.

This is not an electric power cord with a surge protector on it, that you plug into your wall socket/plugin.

Apologies for any confusion.

Fortunately I don't live where lightening strikes are an issue... but we do get power surges/brown outs which can be just as harmful.
All of mine are on surge protectors :D:D:D

I have friends and family who have had these installed... and it has saved them a LOT of money over the years too :D:D:D

Yep, we've got that at this house. I'm not looking forward to rolling brown/blackouts they are now promising us.

had one put in when we bought our house 15 years ago. The electrician did know what I was talking about when I told him what I wanted. I think he had to go do research and find one, but came back and installed it. I still use power strips with them also.

About the plug-in surge protectors: No surge protector is 100% fool proof. Make sure that is rated to protected what you are using it for. Also, make sure that it is indeed a surge protector you are using and not just a power strip. There is a difference!

The original poster is correct....the surge protectors many of us use in our homes (we plug the computer/sewing machine, etc. into the protector and then plug it into the wall outlet) will not give you the protection that you really need against a power surge.

About 25 years ago, one evening we noticed that our lights would steading dim and brighten and dim and brighten and we could actually hear a hum that got soft and loud. Being very young, we had no clue what was going on...the next morning we had an electrician out and discovered we had been having power surges. Luckily, we did not lose too many items due to it. And, as recently as last week, I had a co-worker tell me that they had just had a power surge and lost many appliances and TVs.

I know we all feel safer to be plugging our computers and sewing machines into the plug in surge protectors but one just never knows when there will be a power surge that they will not protect. Very, very good advice!