Dedicated line questions

Korn... You can do what you're suggesting, but would only have dedicated power to one hubbell duplex outlet, and your ground would still be the same as for the rest of your house. If you have more than one empty breaker slot, run a line from each one for true dedication, but you still need a separate ground. Sol322 and Whknopp above are right re: grounding and more than one dedicated duplex outlet. Get an electrician, tell him what you want to accomplish and let them do their job-- that's actually what I did. I ended up with a submain panel, ran four dedicated lines off it and attached a dedicated ground to it as described above. You may be able to run several ded. lines from your main breaker box, but I don't know how you'd handle ded. grounding, ie that's where the electrician comes in. Again, good luck. Craig.

Korn... I just re-read Albert Porters comments on grounding, and he suggests not to run the ground off the sub-main (the way I did), but ground each hubbell outlet separately. My system now sounds great but Alberts suggestion makes sense but is more trouble to implement. At some point I may have an electrician run a ground wire to each outlet. Albert Porter knows much more about this than me. Craig

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't most ground loop problems the result of a difference in potential between grounds, giving rise to "ground loops"? If this is so, then having separate grounds for each outlet would not be wise, right? I can see how having all audio grounded together and separated from other household circuits would be better. Albertporter, this is why you tie the 3 copper bars together, right?

I have 2 20 amp lines run from a submain box that was attached to the main breaker box via conduit. I had an independent ground rod driven for these 2 lines. I think the ground was still tied to the main ground since the two boxes were bonded with the conduit. It was suggested to me in an audio asylum discussion that this arrangement, had created a secondary ground which could endanger my system from lightening strike damage due to the possibility of setting up a loop between the two grounds. If the resistance in the dedicated ground was less the current could feed back through the system. One of the guys provided a technical document supporting the idea. Since i live in an area that has some great thunderstorms (when not suffering from drought as we are now) I moved the ground to the water pipes where the main ground for the house resides and the sound of the system seemed to improve some. The guys in the asylum thought the improvement could have been the result or removing a ground loop that hadn't been at the hum level.

Hi Greysquirrel; "I wish I understood all I know about this"-- an old, but appropriate saying. I just let the electrician ground as they would for a "set" of dedicated outlets for safety purposes. I can tell you two things: (1) my system is sounding excellent, (2) When I plug my amp into the ded. outlet I get fairly loud "ground loop" hum unless I use a two prong adaptor plug (which I do, but wish I didn't have to). I hope Albert P. addresses your question as I'm interested in it too. Cheers. Craig