You have already answered your own question. Tell your electrician to run your new wire on the side of the breaker box NOT shared with your Fridge (or whatever).
You may have to move a few breakers to get that side of the breaker box "pristine clean," away from all possible noise generating sources in your home. Other than that, go with Hospital grade (or at the very least, commercial grade) outlets and 10 gauge wire.
If not 10 gauge, NO less than 12, even for a five foot run and the electrician is stamping his feet over the difficulty of pulling heavy Romex copper and telling you it won't matter. |
You can also run a seperate circuit box(sub-panel) for all your audio only. I had one wired with 12 breaker spaces and of course then had the electrician wire the Sub- panel to my main panel. To make things even more interesting , I also heard that I should use my left side (6 breakers) of the sub-panel for amps and the right side for the rest(Line/phono stages, turntable motor CD player...) of my equipment but I have yet to confirm this. |
My advise is to listen to Albertporter.
I just had my house wired with dedicated circuits.
I used 10/2 romex. And yes, my electrician bitched and moaned about how difficult it was using the 10 gauge wire too!
And since Albert won't push his own products here, I will.
His Porter Ports are worth the money to use. (And if not his, than use something similar, like the PS Audio Power Ports.)
It is worth putting in the dedicated circuits. I definitely noticed a blacker, darker background and better bass response.
BTW, you should do more than 2 outlets if you are doing both Audio and Video, IMHO. I did three circuits (each with two outlets) just for my Audio system. (One for my Amps, One for my Analog Equipment, and One for my Digital Equipment. It is important to get all the digital equipment off the lines that serve the rest of your Audio gear.)
Good Luck! |
I am getting ready to do my place as well, had an electrician friend over 4 dinner the other night, and he will connect the work in the box for me if I run all the wires, a good deal. Any way, its worth doing from the feed back I got when I posed the question, and I cant wait to hear the difference for myself. Good luck on your project. |
I put in three 10 ga Romex dedicated lines myself. It's not difficult, surely not rocket science, but if you are not mechanically inclined, wiser to let an electrician do it (safety). Be sure that the electricity is off.
The hardest part (for this old man), was crawling 40 feet in a very tight crawl space, and digging two trenches in lava rock, for the two 8' dedicated ground rods. The only real pain with using 10 ga wire is when terminating the ends (stiff wire), and getting them to cooperate sharing space in the small electrical baxes - Ha!
I terminated each dedicated line with Porter Ports - very worthwhile.
As for the sub-panel, I used a 12 circuit breaker box, and connected my three lines into breakers 1, 5, and 9 - i.e.:
1 - 2
3 - 4
5 - 6
7 - 8
9 - 10
11 - 12
Same side, but every other row, so that they are same phase. |
Damn Shventus!
What you went through to install your circuits sounds similar to Navy SEAL training.
To liven things up next time you decide to crawl under your house, make sure to set up some barbed wire barriers and have your wife hide a few claymore mines in random spots.
Better yet, hire Slappy! |
Thanks Gunbei,
I sure felt like I was going through some military basic training (Marines, Navy Seals, BUDS, etc.), but I think that it was real enough, I'll pass on the barbed wire, live firing, explosions, and hidden claymores. It was so tight, dark, and humid under my house, here in the tropics, when my knees landed on sharp lava rocks, I thought that I HAD unearthed a claymore. My back didn't forgive me for days - Ha! |
Your story reminds me of when I went under my house a few years ago to run the PVC pipe for my long runs of interconnect.
I had been in total darkness for about half an hour, except for the small flashlight that was resting between my face and the earth. I could only see a few feet beyond that small pool of light.
I sensed something moving off to my left and turned my head. In the dark I could see two glowing eyes moving slowly toward me. I banged my head on the 2X4 runners reaching my hand around to grip the flashlight and when I aimed the beam toward the light I saw my tortoise shell colored kitty cat smiling at me.
I still can't believe she jumped into the scuttle hole to find me. I was never so glad to see a cat in my life. |
Albert: I cracked up when i read your story. I bet you got "a little excited" when you saw "glow in the dark" eyes coming at you, especially eyes that big. With our minds working the way that they do and you being in such a dark and dirty space, i bet that your imagination was primed and ready to go. My guess is that the first thing that came to mind when you saw those eyes was trying to imagine the size of the "mouse" that went along with eyes that big. I think we all know why you hit your head in such a situation : ) Sean
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PS... If one is going to run lines under the house in a dirt crawlspace, why not connect your ground line directly to a ground rod in the crawlspace directly under the floor where the outlets are? This would provide both a phenomenally short path to ground and year round weather protection for the connections to ground. To be safe though and meet local code, you should tie the audio system ground rod back into the grounding system used for the AC mains. While tieing the two ground rods together, clean and weatherproof the connections of the original ground rod used for the mains. All of this is based on the idea that one would be able to drive a ground rod into the soil in their crawlspace, which might not be all that feasible in some situations. |
You guys are too much!! Some great advice out there. My last question is...given 3 dedicated circuits, how many of you use power conditioning devices beyond the dedicated lines? I can't afford 3 dedicated conditioners (Use 1 Audioprism Foundation III now) so what might you choose and on what circuit would you put it? Thanks again. Dave. |
Albert,
LOL - I cracked up laughing, picturing you in a similar situation to mine, & seeing those retinas reflecting back at you. Luckily my crawl space isn't as pitch black, just a much reduced visibilty for my aging eyes (I bumped my noggin more than once). My dog, Sweety, came in looking for me a couple times too.
Sean,
In my case, it was hard enough digging in lava rock & dirt where I had room to manuever. Besides, unless one were to dig a trench, and lay the 8' ground rod in it, or placing it at an extreme angle, there isn't enough room to insert that 5/8" X 8' ground rod from within the crawl space. Besides, my two ground rods are immediately outside the wall of where the electrical boxes on the LR wall are located. The runs to the ground rods are only 4' each (with 18 -20' between rods).
CanucksO,
With my three dedicated lines, I still am using two BPT 3.5 Sign.+ conditioners - 1 for front end, and one on my amp., plus a PS Audio UO for my video. I will give Albert's suggestion a try though, of by-passing them, and plugging straight into the wall, and see if I hear a difference. I'm hoping that I don't, because we have enough lightning storms, black outs, spikes, etc. with our poor electricity, that it would scare the bejesus out of me to leave my components plugged in unprotected.
Thanks.
Skip |
To all
Is there a need to use shielded 10 gauge solid copper wire vs regular 10 guage copper from Home Depot (Romex or equivalent) when putting in dedicated lines? Thanks. Dave |
