I'm running a separate Romex line from my outside AC power source, straight to my monoblock amplifiers. I plan on bypassing my breaker box, and using in line Breakers. This should give me as clean a signal as I can get, without dedicated power poles outside. My monoblocks sit right against the outside edges of my side walls. I plan on driving a ground rod outside the wall by the amplifier, and using bare copper ground cable to completely isolate the ground from the rest of my system or house grounds. My question is, is one ground rod okay with using both grounds from each amplifier to it? Or would I be better off driving and ground rod outside each amplifier, a grounding them separately? Thank you
Last edited:
And it may not even be legal, better check. ANything bad results it could void your homeowner's insurance.
That sounds like a bad idea looking for a problem that isn't there...any well designed amplifier will have sufficient power supply rejection to make all of those ideas unnecessary. I see little to gain, and much to risk in your plan, as Rayma and Enzo said above.
Mike
Mike
Breaks electrical code. Breaks IEEE/ANSI standards. Good luck getting your insurance company to reimburse you after a lightning strike. Isolated ground rods are 100% wrong and foolish.
This forum has many threads that propagate the suggestion, and there will be more.
Medical facilities, high reliability datacenters, super low noise audio systems with balanced power, etc ALL have an equipotential ground system with no isolated ground rods.
Look up "transferred earth potential" and recognize you are doing this within the confines of your own home.
This forum has many threads that propagate the suggestion, and there will be more.
Medical facilities, high reliability datacenters, super low noise audio systems with balanced power, etc ALL have an equipotential ground system with no isolated ground rods.
Look up "transferred earth potential" and recognize you are doing this within the confines of your own home.
> completely isolate the ground
Dirt has no magic properties. Mostly when we lazily say "ground" we really mean "common": circuits should be connected *together* or trouble can happen.
Dirt has no magic properties. Mostly when we lazily say "ground" we really mean "common": circuits should be connected *together* or trouble can happen.
Don't do it !! Protection should be before the cable and not after.
Many things can happen to the cable before the breaker.
You are asking for gound loops.
I have 5 switchboards at home. Two inside the house, two in the garages and another in the well pump "house" in the garden. All switchboards have its copper ground rod and all grounds are connected in-between.
... but I don't own expensive boutique sound systems.
Wow! Nevermind. But you guys have a few things incorrect. Inline breakers would be installed way back at the AC source. Not by the amplifiers. Stereophile had an electrician discussing designing dedicated sound rooms, and dedicated lines and circuits. Anytime they had noise in the AC lines, it was often eliminated by grounding right outside the wall of the amplifier. The ground is NOT floated like this. It is only grounded directly to earth, instead of all the way back down the romex, picking up noise, just to end up grounded THE SAME WAY. By a ground rod outside the wall of the breaker box. Extra ground wire to ground the same way in the end.
In the end, ALL I was asking opinions on was one ground rod for both amps, or one each. And the isolated romex wire is SO easy to run to the amps ... why run it through the rest of the houses electrical to pick up noise? The breaker is also THE SAME. Just not used at the main box, but back at the service pole. Same kind of breaker, only inline for ease of installation.
But for the sake of sanity, I will just plug in to the wall, and spend a couple of grand on power filter conditioners, lol.
In the end, ALL I was asking opinions on was one ground rod for both amps, or one each. And the isolated romex wire is SO easy to run to the amps ... why run it through the rest of the houses electrical to pick up noise? The breaker is also THE SAME. Just not used at the main box, but back at the service pole. Same kind of breaker, only inline for ease of installation.
But for the sake of sanity, I will just plug in to the wall, and spend a couple of grand on power filter conditioners, lol.
In one of my systems in the late 90s, I grounded my amp through the wall like I mentioned. It allowed me to sell my Richard Gray power conditioners, and buy a new SACD player. After grounding outside, I tried listening without the Richard Gray pieces, and the AC grit on the line was gone. The best part, is the system now had more dynamics and details without the power conditioners. A big win for me. This was in Houston, where we had HUGE lighting storms. Some items were fried in the house during a storm. But not my amps, lol. Being independently grounded meant they were not hit when it traveled through the rest of the house. Of course a direct hit would have toasted them.
I do not have the knowledge to know if it is nonsense. I do know what worked for my circumstances, when I experimented. I'm not real good at internet researching. But I will try and find the article online this week. I haven't read Stereophile since 2002
Given a panelboard installed and connected according to code, a dedicated circuit with its own breaker and wiring and terminated in an isolated ground receptacle -- pretty standard since the advent of computers -- should deliver everything you could want in providing AC to your system.
A dedicated circuit that doesn't perform well enough is most likely due to deficiencies at or before the panelboard -- which should trigger immediate remediation by an electrician -- or vagaries in the utility outside the building which might be beyond your control.
I shudder to think what romex connected to the outside AC might look like. "Danger. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger! Danger!"
A dedicated circuit that doesn't perform well enough is most likely due to deficiencies at or before the panelboard -- which should trigger immediate remediation by an electrician -- or vagaries in the utility outside the building which might be beyond your control.
I shudder to think what romex connected to the outside AC might look like. "Danger. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger! Danger!"
Not trying to trigger your OCD or anything but...are the transformers out on the power poles audiophile rated? And what about those miles and miles of who knows what kind of wire connecting to the sub-station. It never ends I tell ya! 😀
Mike
Mike
No. Two (unconnected) ground rods are dangerous and offer no benefit. You are imagining things. Please do not do any of what you have proposed because, as others have mentioned, it is actually very dangerous. PE ("ground") does not do what you think it does and Stereophile is full of BS. Your lightning strike story and experience isn't in alignment with how PE works; if anything, you got lucky. Ground rods spaced apart may not be not equipotential. You should do some research on the impedance of soil.
Since you confirmed above that you don't know what you're doing, please trust that some of the more experienced forum members here are not out to disagree with your audio philosophies. They don't want to see you injured or have an incident which will cause your insurance company to deny any claims.
Again, ground rods do not have anything to do with noise; they are for safety only. Airplanes and fighter jets fly with sensitive electronics and they don't need to drop an anchor to earth.
Last edited:
Hi,
I hold an unrestricted electrical license, perhaps I can be of some assistance - I'd be referring to Australian Standards and this may not carry across, although it could. You would need to exercise due diligence and find out for sure.
Contents of your breaker box will be protected by (typically) a 63A or 80A service fuse, outside of the house, either up on the distribution pole for an over/under supply, mounted to the house itself up where the line comes in for over-head supply, or in a pit/box if the consumer supply is under-ground.
You will have a main switch inside that box, and its a requirement that this main switch isolate all sub-circuits from the 'live' conductor in the consumer main supply. From this main switch will be circuit breakers and/or residual current devices, you want the circuit breakers as close as possible to this main switch, and typically these breakers are DIN rail mounted and run with low impedance bus-combing, or low impedance single insulated cable to the line side.
The cable run should be protected by a residual current device, utilizing a protected neutral, which is different from the main neutral at the consumer supply. Another reason why your switch-gear should end up inside the main switchboard. So, put the circuit breakers in the main switch board, next to the main switch and run as many separate circuits to your listening room as you need to satisfy maximum demand.
You can have more than one earth electrode per installation. Many sub boards out in sheds (etc) use a separate earth electrode because it decreases overall line to earth return impedance in order to satisfy the requirements of 'fault loop current'. This minimum value for fault loop impedance ensures that during fault conditions the current drawn is high enough to trip the over-current protection device, and this is very important (also overlooked/misunderstood by the 'back-yarders'). The thing is not to have these two (or three) earth electrodes connected via anything except the soil to which they are fitted. It is combination of circuit breaker over current protection from line to earth, and RCD current imbalance from line to neutral (or protected neutral to earth short) which protect the installation and users.
Nothing you are suggesting is really over-the-top or different in concept, it will be the execution that will require just some simple thought. With the earth electrodes, mechanical protection is important, as-in missing drains and pipework as you drive them 1200 mm into the ground. Use zinc spray to help with galvanic issues due to indifferent metals.
In short, get a licensed guy out to have a look, he wont take exception to why you want it done (he might have some experience or curiosity, mostly from the angle of helping you with an idea/aspect you may have not considered), get a fixed price, do the same twice more, and if all else is equal, go with the middle quote ..
SM
Last edited:
I agree with your recommendation to get a licensed professional. I think you may be misunderstanding what he's recommending to do with the earth electrodes though. Unless I'm the one with the misunderstanding, what he is doing is prohibited by NEC.
Sam, your world is not the US. A 63A main, while adequate (I can run on 50A) is no longer fashionable, 100A about the minimum here. DIN-rail is unknown; instead we have several proprietary bus box systems. Whole-house GFI is not done, though we are trending to not just GFI but AFCB on most of our many circuits.
While Flaxxer may know what he is doing, it is not clear to me, which means it will not be clear to the many many others who read this thread now and in years to come. And misinterpretation of stuff like this is liable to shock and fire and giving Hi-Fi a bad name. I really think this thread should be locked.
While Flaxxer may know what he is doing, it is not clear to me, which means it will not be clear to the many many others who read this thread now and in years to come. And misinterpretation of stuff like this is liable to shock and fire and giving Hi-Fi a bad name. I really think this thread should be locked.
Rating of service fuse simply doesnt matter WRT what is being contemplated here, all it does is protect the cable from the service point to the main switch and DIN rail is simply a mounting mech for circuit breakers.
If nothing else, and what I see a lot of, is high fault loop impedance due to high line to earth return paths. As you'd know, active shorts to 'protected' metal case, loop impedance is too high, circuit breaker holds in, and someone unlucky is on the other end.
Overall I think the information here presents with more good than harm, due-diligence is expressed and covered/mentioned more than once..
Maybe the thread should be locked/deleted, but if nothing else it might stop someone running a '32A' cable 200M, loading it up just 20A and not knowing why someone died.
If nothing else, and what I see a lot of, is high fault loop impedance due to high line to earth return paths. As you'd know, active shorts to 'protected' metal case, loop impedance is too high, circuit breaker holds in, and someone unlucky is on the other end.
Overall I think the information here presents with more good than harm, due-diligence is expressed and covered/mentioned more than once..
Maybe the thread should be locked/deleted, but if nothing else it might stop someone running a '32A' cable 200M, loading it up just 20A and not knowing why someone died.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.