How to guarantee to lower noise- ground loops in your system

Several years ago I drove a new ground rod directly outside of my dedicated listening room, and connected an 8 gauge ground wire to an isolated 20 amp receptacle. That receptacle feeds my Pure Power 2000 a/c regenerator and also my APC S20 power conditioner. That isolated ground was the only ground wire for my stereo system, and did not connect to my electrical panel. It worked fine but I did not notice any great improvement in my sound. Maybe I might have noticed a greater improvement if I had also ran the neutral wire to the new ground rod, or maybe not.

About a year later I was talking to one of my new club members who had moved to Florida from north of Dallas Texas, and is an electrician. Since he is an electrician I told him what I had done for an isolated ground in my system. This is freaky, but he told me that he had done the exact same thing in Texas. His ground rod was struck by lightning, and traveled through the ground wire into his isolated ground receptacle, and also caught his drapes on fire.

It had previously been in the back of my mind that the same thing could happen to me, because we get a tremendous amount of lightning where I live. My dedicated isolated ground receptacle is also behind my drapes, and I do not want to remove the drapes because they run the entire length of that wall. So I removed the eight gauge ground wire and reconnected the ground wire that goes to my electrical panel.

In the future I may try installing a plastic box on the exterior wall by the new ground rod and leaving enough wire inside the box to reconnect to the ground rod for brief usage at times when I’m sure there will not be lightning strikes. This is entirely illegal and shows that there are solid reasons for electrical codes, and most of all to always pull an electrical permit for new electrical work. If you do not want your house to burn down do not try the above.

To Cleeds,

Your response that me using a ground isolation receptacle and running the ground wire to an outside grounding rod does not sound logical that the circuit breaker could never trip.

My first house did not even have any ground wires, and I blew plenty of fuses in that house.  To this day you do not even need a ground wire between your electrical meter and the first electrical panel in the house.  Although you do need to run a ground wire from the first panel to any other panels.

Ok, I mentioned running the neutral and ground wires from that receptacle to the exterior ground rod instead of going back to the electrical  panel.  There was a 120v circuit between the hot from the circuit breaker and ground wire that ran to the exterior ground rod.  Can you explain to me why the 20 amp circuit breaker would not trip if the circuits 20 amp breaker was overloaded, other than it being a defective breaker anyway.  It does not make any sense to me that a not defective 20 amp circuit breaker could pass more than the specified amperage just because the ground did not go to the neutral or ground buss bars, that's probably rated for well over 100 amps  From your response above anyone that did not know any better would think that even with a dead short a non defective breaker would not trip. You are in essence saying that it would be like not having the circuit breaker at all

Sure, I know that in the rare case that an overloaded 20 amp circuit breaker fails to trip you would hope that the panels 200 amp main breaker would trip before the wire from the 20 amp circuit started a fire.

Either having a defective breaker or like I said previously lightning could, and has started many fires.

To Almarg,

Ok, so you proved my point, because your illustration only shows a 5 amp current draw on a 20 amp circuit breaker, there in not any way 5 amps could trip a normal 20 amp circuit breaker.  Your circuit illustration defective equipment  would have to be connected either to a ground fault receptacle or ground fault circuit breaker to be correct.  Never have I seen any ground fault equipment in any ones audio chain. Ground fault receptacles are made for wet locations, so be careful whenever you touch anything connected to a live circuit.  Wear non conductive shoes and only touch these items with one hand.  If you do however touch an energized piece of equipment while barefoot, briefly touch only with your right hand while standing on your right foot, but it is not safe practice. 

Every preamp or power amp that I own has a tiny fuse of no more than five amps.  My power conditioners have 20 amp circuit breakers that will trip if there was somehow a dead short pulling more than the specified 20 amps.  If however there was a 5 amp short like in the page 29 schematic there is no reason that it would not be safely discharged to ground. 

To Cleeds,

You said above " because a fault on the ground wouldn’t trip the breaker back at the panel"  

What I said was ANYONE WHO DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER  would think that the breaker would never trip.  All we are talking about here is a piece of audio equipment that's chassis has become energized, and is sending current to an illegal exterior grounding rod.  Why is the equipment dangerous if it's sending the current to the illegal grounding rod, unless you are standing barefoot in water while playing your stereo, and then you become the ground?  Please don't go to your NEC code book for the answer.  It's the grounding rod that is the real danger, because lightning makes it a fire hazard.  

On Feb. 16th I wrote above that an electrician in my club had his drapes catch on fire from lightning hitting his illegal grounding rod, for his stereo system, and that is when I pulled my illegal grounding cable out of my house.  If that electricians house would have burned down an insurance adjuster would not have paid the claim.  Insurance companies will not pay off for any work done to a house without an building permit, and that goes for house additions too.  County governments keep accurate records of building permits all the way back to when the house was built, and the adjuster will check them before he comes to your house.

In older homes there are countless pieces of equipment that do not have chassis grounds.  As I'm writing this I'm also playing my stereo that has a phono section, a line preamp and dual mono power amps that all have switches to lift the chassis grounds.  Those mono amps always play with the ground lifting switches in the lift position, because they sound better that way, in my system that has extremely sensitive speakers.  Even if those chassis became energized they would have to stay that way as long as the sound remained better.

Other than my home audio, I do believe you can never have too many grounding rods for exterior equipment.  In the past I have driven an extra grounding rod for my exterior a/c condensing unit, because children played barefoot in that area.  You can never be too safe when it comes to protecting children.  There have been many fatalities from wet exterior energized equipment and tools, with or without rain in wet locations.