I've been having a home game for quite a while now, and we have a regular group of about 10 to 15 players...the typical game will be a $30 buy-in with a $30 re-buy in the first 2 hours (4 levels).
As the host, sometimes I hate to see a friend get knocked out in the first 5 minutes (I am there to make money of course, but my home game is more about relaxing fun with friends).

So I was thinking about a way to prolong the typical "life span" of everyone so no one gets felted on the first hand. Then I discovered spread limit, which seems like a great way to accomplish my goal.

What I'm looking for is advice from experience on how wide to spread the betting limits, for example:

Blinds 25/50, spread is 50 to 250 (5 times the big blind) ---> is this the typical and/or best way to set it up? Does anyone move to no-limit once you reach the final 4 or heads-up?

Any other thoughts are appreciated

You could try a betting cap of X amount of blinds for the hand which would add an interesting twist to tourney strategy.

A pot limit tourney would help them last a little longer.

I play a lot of spread limit but in my experience I've only seen it done in cash game formats. You could make a spread limit tourney but I don't know how cool that would be. If your going to set up a spread limit tourney you should keep it spread limit for the entire tournament. If you want to keep the limits smaller have it 5Xbb but the game would play a bit better if you had 8Xbb. The larger the spread limit the more creative you can be.

Some spread limit games play like FL and some play like NL, it really depends on how much you spread. I know theres a spread limit game in Deadwood that has 1-2blinds and spreads to 150. So its 2-150 game which plays a lot like no limit. But then theres a 2-10 game at my local casino that plays more like FL. So you have to decide how you want the game to play. I'd recommend around 8-10Xbb spread.