Building New House - dedicated ele. best practices

Kirkus,

With all due respect, 12 gauge wire is the required minimum size for the 20 amp circuit(s) Shak wants. National Electrical Code minimums: 14 ga for 15 amps, 12 gauge for 20 amps, 10 ga for 30 amps.

Putting the audio system on one phase is only a good idea if the electrical system remains balanced.

Outlet tester, check. Wire nuts, check. I tested the outlets in my Mom's house and found a group that showed reversed hot & neutral. After looking at (and moving) all the wiring in the affected outlet boxes, symptoms switched to open ground. Turned out to be a lousy connection between ground wires at a green grounding wire nut in yet another box. On the typical neon-bulb tester, a poor (but not open) ground can cause a reverse-polarity indication

Shak,

I don't know if it'll fit your budget (but it may, since the walls are open in a house being built), but I'd go with STEEL-armored BX (or conduit, but don't let the electrician talk you into using aluminum--it won't block magnetic fields).

BTW, be aware that there are a lot of nutty, unsafe ideas floating around among audiophiles. Never blindly accept electrical advice from people who don't state their qualifications to offer it. Mine are that I've worked as an electronic technician (and have been involved in repairing industrial wiring on machines) for almost thirty-five years and was a Building Equipment Maintenance supervisor (which included supervising electricians) for 13 months.

Ask your electrician to confirm that any electrical info you receive from strangers is not a violation of the NEC (not that he's going to violate the rules and risk losing his license anyway. And don't bother asking him which brand wire or outlet sounds better, unless you have an electrician who's also an audiophile).

Definetly do the dedicated circuits keeping your digital components on seperate circuits from your analog components .
Also put these on an isolated ground . Are you energy contious ? How many incandesent light bulbs have you switched to flourescent ? It is getting more difficult to isolate the noise makers now a days !
Make sure that your electrician is well versed in isolated grounds . This type of circuit is generally used in the commercial end of the buisness , hospitals and computer centers . I found that residential electricians were aware of isolated grounds but did not know the proper procedure for installing them !

Good luck .

Alrau, I forgot about Shak's 20A specification as I got to typing my diatribe. Of course, at 20A they will be using 12 . . . my recommendation is to use it for 15A circuits as well in new construction. In fact, the electrical contractor that I use doesn't use 14ga at all on new residences.

Also, given the number of receptacle branch circuits on a typical residential panel, it's extremely unlikely that there'd be so many dedicated audio/video circuits as to make balancing the panel difficult while keeping them on the same phase. The only thing is that the electrician gives it a bit more thought, rather than assigning breakers purely in the manner that's fastest to wire.

We're definately in agreement where credentials are concerned . . . but no matter what credentials anybody here has, to Shak we're just some blokes killing time by typing away on Audiogon. Hence the advice on establishing a good, close relationship with the on-site electricians.

Having recently installed two separate 20 amp circuits my electrician was also concerned about ground noise. Double check the grounding.

My run from the electrical panel is 75' using 14 ga with Shunyata Research SR-Z1 AC Outlet.

Lapierre,

If your 20 amp circuits really are wired with 14 gauge, your electrician screwed up big-time. As I stated above (and the NEC states constantly), 12 gauge is the minimum for 20 amp circuits.