Star Grounding and the Home


This comes up a bit so I wanted to talk about it.

 

You may not, for safety reasons, create a separate grounding scheme for appliances fed from the same service. May. Not. Ever. That means that at the service entrance all the grounds and the neutrals must connect, preferably with zero Ohms between them and zero Ohms to the ground rod(s). I say preferably because, corrossion, splices, etc. These are rarely perfect.

 

However, you MAY run an insulated separate ground wire to the ground rods which feed the rest of the home. This is like a star grounding scheme in a piece of audio gear. You meet the code criteria, and you hopefully dissipate noise in the ground wiring of your home at the rod before it can reach your gear. You can achieve a very good version of this by running a sub panel to your audio room.

 

One interesting possibility that I’ve seen some power conditioners hint at is to use a coil with appropriate gauge wiring and low DCR to isolate the gear. This meets the code requirements that it can carry 100% of the current in the event of a short, and the coil blocks noise from the rest of the home. Pricey, cause it requires heavy coils, and because.... audiophiles.

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by whart

Here’s what I know: there can be inter-component grounding differences (in design or implementation) that exist when a system is hooked up normally, assuming no issues with power in the room. I experimented (a fairly long time ago) with that Granite Audio device that allowed you to change the relative impedance among 3 different "channels" of external grounding cable-- essentially a star ground-- that did reduce (or seemed to) some of the noise of the system, but did not eliminate a hum from my amps, which are known to do that. (You lift or use one of those humbuster thingies). Yeah, I know, good design and all that, but yell at Vlad.

This was before the commercialization of fancy ground boxes, like the Entreq and Tripoint, which I never experimented with.

My power set up in this house, as of mid-2017, is very good as is the "dirty" power coming to me from Austin Energy. Though I spent for a big iso transformer that sits outside in a weatherproof NEMA cabinet (400 + lbs) and followed best practices in 10 gauge dedicated lines, I’m not sure how much difference star grounding would make. I did have the electrician wire a "clean ground" which ties back to the main system ground, and ultimately, to the house ground (per Code). But I'm not currently using that for anything and when I experimented with it--connections made to a heavy copper buss bar---it didn't seem to make much difference, so I undid all that extra wiring. Maybe that small reduction in noise is improved with the granules in the grounding box, and other esoterica, but I never made that leap.

I think so much starts with the quality of power coming in, and the state of your main service panel and how you are wired in, that I would take the view of sorting that first, before addressing refinements. I know back in the day, ground lifting was common, but I have managed to refrain from doing that.