Grounding rods..??

[topround]

I was thinking of inserting a copper grounding rod into the earth outside my window which is 2 feet from my equipment rack. Maybe run a 8 foot  copper pipe into the ground and run a  thin copper wire thru my window frame and ground my AC outlet where the system is plugged in.

Is this a good idea?

Any input on how best to do this? Anyone do this?

Am I nuts

Mike

[richidoo]

Actually, you are nuts on this one, Mike.     But you are still the coolest audiophile I know. Keep the juices flowin!!

Kinda longish answer....
Multiple earthing rods can only be used as part of a lightning protection system, not for electrical service. You can only have one earthing rod for the service of the whole house. The reason for this is lightning. If lightning got into the electrical system, it would see two paths to earth. There must be resistance between them, even if bonded together, and that resistance when charged with 10MV, would cause hundreds of amps of current to flow, vaporizing the copper ground conductors and starting anything near them on fire.

In lightning systems, the separate earth rods are intended only to be a shorter path to earth for the lightning, rather than going into the house and through the main panel to get to the earth. But lightning earth rods are never connected to the house electrical system.

And lest you think you can listen only on sunny days and disconnect it when not listening (I tried that mental exercise once,) the lightning earth rods must still (by code) be bonded outside the house to the main electrical service earth, which defeats the purpose since the noise from your applicances and the shared cable TV ground still gets in through the bonding cable.

Another thing I thought of was to run a direct single run ground wire from stereo outlet to the service earthing rod, to lower ground impedance. But that too causes a ground loop which will explode in case of a strike, because neutral is connected to ground in the main service panel, making a big long loop of several ohms resistance. A lightning bomb.

Things you can do to improve your stereo system's ground, is to open up the outlets you are using, make sure the ground wires are clean and screwed down hard under the nut. You'd be surprised how sloppily some electricians work nowadays. Current makes heat and repeated heat cycles inside a cold exterior wall can loosen a ground nut if it wasn't tight to start. Tighten all the connections of power and ground from the stereo back to the service panel. Get rid of any backstabbed outlet connections. Put everything under the screw. Then make sure the ground cable going to the outdoor earthing rod near the meter is tight at the service panel and at the earth rod. The little bronze bracket that hooks onto the rod should be checked for tightness. It maybe underground. I always thought using some fancy contact enhancer like Walker SST would lower the impedance of all those connections along the way.  In wall wire nut ground connections are the worst, try to eliminate those if possible, but it's hard to know where they are. They have to be in a junction box, so you can find them if you want to hunt. Running direct romex from stereo outlet to panel breaker eliminates the concern of crappy ground connections in between.

Make sure you don't have any ground noise coming in from cable TV. Satellite and FM antennas need their cable shield tied to earth outside the house, and this is a source of ground loop noise in the stereo, if the ground is shared with IC ground. A Jensen coax transformer for antennas will solve that.

One more thing, once you get your electrical connections as tight and sauced up as possible, you can lower ground impedance one more way. Dig a shallow ditch a foot wide around the earth rod, pour salt into the ditch every once in a while. Rain will wash out the salt so you gotta fill it up once in a while. The salt increases the conductivity of moisture in the soil, allowing the rod to have a better connection to the earth. It might make the copper corrode faster? I don't know.

You can read a lot about grounding strategies on the Ham radio sites. It's a little boring but the info is out there.

The grounding rod has to be solid copper, since it carries the lightning strike into the ground. Thin walled plumbers tubing would not cut it, but it would make a fine quiet electrical ground. Never solder any grounds, lightning current will melt it.

Another great strategy for grounding the stereo system is to use a balanced power transformer, with floating secondary ground. Ground is not forced to earth, it can float, so it is absolutely dead silent. Combined with a good solid outlet ground back to the panel, I think this is the ultimate power source for stereo. Especially for tube amps.
http://www.equitech.com/articles/enigma.html
http://www.equitech.com/articles/articles.html
Rich

[lonewolfny42]

Am I nuts...

You could be....but..... weer all crazee now...



Some info for you.....

http://www.ecmag.com/index.cfm?fa=article&articleID=5794


Good luck Mike....

[BobM]

If you're thinking of doing this then you would need to lift all your grounds in your system so you don't have 2 different grounding paths. That could easily lead to a ground loop.

But this "tweak" is not advised and generally considered not safe. I've heard people say there are sound benefits, but you could be compromising your homeowners insurance by doing this. A much better alternative, although more costly, would be to install a house-wide power conditioner. Or maybe try and condition those appliances in the home that cause the most noise (fridge, washer, dimmer switches, etc.).

[tmazz]

Multiple earthing rods can only be used as part of a lightning protection system, not for electrical service. You can only have one earthing rod for the service of the whole house. The reason for this is lightning. If lightning got into the electrical system, it would see two paths to earth. There must be resistance between them, even if bonded together, and that resistance when charged with 10MV, would cause hundreds of amps of current to flow, vaporizing the copper ground conductors and starting anything near them on fire.

I may end up pissing off a few people, like I did during the cheater plug thread, but this is too important to not comment on.

Rich is dead right with this one. The National Electric Code (as well as all the local codes) were all designed with only one thing in mind, the protection of lives and property. While some of the things in the code may result in situations that are less than optimal for the sound of our systems, the downside risks of stretching the envelope, even a little, are far too great to even think about. No matter how good a change in electrical wiring might make your system sound now, it won't sound very good if it is sitting in the middle of a pile of smoldering embers. If you don't properly protect your home from electricity it will fight back, and it rarely loses.  And lightning is the granddaddy of all electrical sources. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to follow the electric codes out to their most minute details.

Just a little story on the power of lightning. In the late 80s as the telephone system as evolving from electromechanical relay based switching to computer controlled digital switching static and grounding issues became very important as more and more equipment based on CMOS chips was being introduced into our switching centers. So most of our engineers ended up going through quit a bit of training on proper grounding techniques. During one of those sessions the instructor asked the class how much of a voltage drop they thought would occur across a piece of 6” x1/2” solid copper bussbar during a lightning strike. Most of the people in the class said virtually none because a piece of solid copper that size would have almost not resistance. The instructor said well what about the inductive voltage drop. At that point everybody looked at him like he was out of his mind. This was a solid piece of straight copper, not a coil, what inductance was he talking about? Well of course, everything conductor has some inductance, even if it is a “microscopic” amount. He asked us if we would accept that the bar had an inductance I the area of a pico henry or smaller. People said OK and he then proceeded calculate the inductive voltage drop of 1 pico henry during a lightning strike (don’t hold me to these numbers, it was over 20 years ago, but you will get the idea). A lightning strike contains 10s of thousands of amps and a rise time that is measured in milli, if not nano-seconds. Put that all together in the inductive voltage formula of L di/dt and that buss bar can have a voltage differential across its length of thousands of volts. And that is not even counting in the IR drop. People often say that lightning does strange things. In reality lightning behaves in a very predictable way (and in exactly the same way that any other electricity behaves.. It is just that it the physical characteristics of lightning are so far outside of what we are used to seeing from controlled commercial electric that its behavior falls outside the realm of what we expect electricity to do. (it’s kind of like comparing an M-80 to an A-bomb).

Bottom line electrical (and especially lightning) protection s just not an area where any of us should be playing outside the box, no matter what sonic benefit we can gain from it.

[richidoo]

There is plenty of room 'inside the box' for improvements, but few audiophiles take the time to learn how to improve their electricity safely, and within NEC. They plug a Hydra into a shared switched outlet 100 feet and 5 wire nuts from the service panel and assume that they are done, never knowing what they are missing. I applaud Mike's desire to go for the gold in every area. It is so inspiring to me to help me get off my ass and start doing stuff to improve my sound.

The best audio power I ever heard was Shane's system in his old house, where a dedicated panel close to the system powered audio-only lines via JPS in-wall wire. That was a gigantic improvement. He had some running springs stuff too, but it was already there before the wiring upgrade. JPS wire is only $25/ft. Pisser.  I bet it makes a great SC.

Getting all the audio circuits on the same leg is a good idea too.

[rollo]

   For years at the recco of CAT I installed a copper rod outside and connected the CAT preamp to it. Lifted all other grounds with cheater plugs. The gear was plugged into two different circuits.
  No hum,buzz or other noise issues. DEAD quiet. Was that a ill advised method ? Was I just lucky nothing got damaged ? Not using that method now actually not in years.
  What I did do is have the electrician clean and tighten the existing ground. Change breakers, tighten every screw at the outlets and grounded the Bx caseing.
  Now with the addition of the Alan Maher CBFs [7] all is better than before. More dynamic, more info, better defined bass and imaging.


charles

[topround]

My family would like to thank all those who gave us the good advice.
Their father would burn down the house!!

OK it was a silly idea, but it seemed like a good one at first.

Mike
back to the drawing board to concoct some new schemes!

[richidoo]

   For years at the recco of CAT I installed a copper rod outside and connected the CAT preamp to it. Lifted all other grounds with cheater plugs. The gear was plugged into two different circuits.
  No hum,buzz or other noise issues. DEAD quiet. Was that a ill advised method ? Was I just lucky nothing got damaged ? Not using that method now actually not in years.
  What I did do is have the electrician clean and tighten the existing ground. Change breakers, tighten every screw at the outlets and grounded the Bx caseing.
  Now with the addition of the Alan Maher CBFs [7] all is better than before. More dynamic, more info, better defined bass and imaging.


charles

Since the CAT gear still used the neutral from the electrical service, and neutral is connected to the main ground and earthing rod via the main service panel, you did create a "ground loop" and potential lightning bomb by grounding the CAT chassis to the 2nd earth. Lightning strikes are very very rare.  But they do happen.

Tom, is "ground loop" really the right name for this? It's not humming with AC, but I guess it's the same principle, stray current due to ground resistance.....

[tmazz]

My family would like to thank all those who gave us the good advice.
Their father would burn down the house!!

OK it was a silly idea, but it seemed like a good one at first.

Mike
back to the drawing board to concoct some new schemes!

Mike,

It wasn't because you checked it out before going ahead and doing it. That is the smart thing to do. Like Rich said, there is plenty of room for inside the box improvements, the problem is that too many people have no idea where the boundries of the box are. I don't think there are any Nervosians who would purposely say "Hey I know this is dangerous but I'm doing it anyway because it sounds better." While the ols saying goes "ignorance is bliss", it can also be dangerous. But that is one of the beauties of AN. If you have an idea, even if it sounds off the wall, you can throw it out there and we have a whole communiy of people with all kinds of backgrounds and expertise and help you out with thoughts and advise. As they taught us in engineering school, they can't expect you to know everything, but they will expect you to know who to ask. Remember, everything inside the box was on the outside at one time. Ideas in and of themselves are always good. Just be sure to be safe before you try them.

Tom

[tmazz]

Tom, is "ground loop" really the right name for this? It's not humming with AC, but I guess it's the same principle, stray current due to ground resistance.....

I would think so. The hum you are referring to is just a symptom  we experience in our audio systems caused by a physical ground loop. (I guess it is actually caused by a piece of equipment being connected to two or more ground planes that are at different electrical potentials. If both ground points were at exactly the same potential there would be no current flow and no hum even though there was a "looping" electrical path.)

[richidoo]

Thanks

[rollo]

Richadoo the CAT was not gtouded to the second circuit a cheater plug was used.


charles

[richidoo]

Cheater plug stops safety ground, but still lets hot and neutral in. Neutral is connected to ground in the fusebox. Also, safety ground can get in through an IC since signal ground is often tied to PS ground which is almost always earthed - except AVA You can run but you can't hide. If you use single ended power the earth referenced ground will find you. bwahahahahaahaha     Balanced power makes 120V potential with 60V+ and 60V-, so ground is not part of power delivery, just safety, so it can float, not directly tied to earth. Ahh Freedom!!

[iGrant]

Nice to see some people here understand grounding and life/equipment safety and code regulations, you should pin this post or at least the good parts of it. The name of a cheater plug is just that, for someone who feels cheating is acceptable, A cheater plug needs to have it's ground pin connected to another ground point, which 9 times out of 10 reintroduces the problem multiplied, unless you know what you are doing, cheaters rarely do. I wonder who rollo would have blamed if he had killed someone or fried his gear due to his lack of common sense?  .

'Ground differential' is what most home users are dealing with, often caused by improper installation by your local cable company who are not interested in connecting their service ground all the way back to main panel ground point, typically at your water meter. The simple 'audio' solution for home users is to have all your gear on the same wall plug thru a designed for amplification power bar for distribution, or separate unfiltered power bar for your amp(s) fed from the same wall receptacle. Ideally on a dedicated circuit for just audio fed from a load balanced main or sub panel.

In Canada we are having xome success now by calling up our cable company and telling them to redo the cable ground to code. If you need to have your cable system tied into your audio system as many do, then there is an inline isolator that you can install on your cable that usually works, but this ground differential can still be lethal if someone is touching anything connected to the ground system during a lightning strike to the grid close by. Ground differential can kill and OP that is what you would have set up if you weren't wise enough to ask the right people here .

Ground loop is usually something only live and studio engineers have to deal with as they have multiple and changing pieces of gear in the chain and can't get it all on the same circuit and have substantial cabling runs where the ground can not find a path of least resistance to the mains ground.

Hope that helps those that understand and appreciate when being helped.

Cheers,
Ian