Environmental Potentials whole house surge protection, can I get your opinions?

Westom--thank you. I know I looked at some of this when I did my current room, but it wasn't constructed from the ground up. This one may or may not be~ a separate building, hopefully with separate service from the house. (Many of the places in Austin have "guest houses" on the property- I'd use that for my music and office). I also have a large Equi=Tech wall cabinet with big isolation transformer that I will probably work into the equation--not for protection against lightening, but to isolate the system from anomalies on the line. (It is a balanced power set up, which raises a host of other issues). I've got some leg work to do.
 

If isolation transformers did that protection, then a utility transformer that provides AC power means no anomalies exist.  Other potentially destructive anomalies act just like lightning.  We simply use lightning as an example of all other potentially destructive anomalies created by stray cars, grid switching, tree rodents, linemen errors, and wind.

Even existing buildings must have earth ground inspected - often upgraded.  Any earth ground that only meets today's human safety codes (ie NEC) is often insufficient earthing for appliance safety.  Plenty of questions about earthing should exist.  Even underground service does not protect from surges - including direct lightning strikes.

For example, a separate structure may require its own 'whole house' solution.  Generally a separation of more than 25 feet is a ball park number for a building that is not protected by 'whole house' protection in a main building.

Back to that isolation transformer - one that is already doing your 'primary' protection.  Same earthing requirements that make your 'secondary' protection layer effective also must be inspected in that 'primary' protection layer.  More reasons why so many previous paragraphs should have resulted in plenty of questions.  Even a transformer in an Equi-Tech cabinet is only as effective as its earth ground.

@westom I hear you Westom. I've got layers of stuff to wade through. Much depends on whether I build from scratch or work with an existing structure. When I have more info on what I'm dealing with, I'll be posting here-perhaps a new thread, since I don't want to highjack this one (any more than I have). Thank you. Good holiday to all. 

That Ufer ground looks very interesting. Thanks for bringing it up. I am always amazed by what information can be gotten on the internet.
Whart, don't worry about hijacking my thread. I enjoy learning new things.

So, it seems the ground may be a place I should be inspecting more closely. As my house is almost 100 years old, is there any way to test a ground? Or, is there any way to add a newer/more effective ground?
Thanks Bob

I have dual solid copper large ground rods pounded in over 8' apart and large copper solid core ground wire running the them (in series) to my house feed/meter head. From there, I have an EP 2050 waveform regenerator+surge suppression on my main house panel and EP-2750 ground filters on the dedicated circuit in the subpanel and the feed from main house panel. Upstream are my power conditioners in the room. The EP units with proper deep earth ground is a very effective combination. See my system page for more details.