Your One Bullet Point Solution; Electrical Upgrade


Two points; I am well aware of many threads on topic of electrical service. I do not have time to read hundreds of posts, but wish to distill them down with your help. I will also post this on the Misc Forum to get wider response:

Doing service upgrade to 100A. I plan on adding a whole house surge protector, type 2, add on to panel after the service enters house. Panel to the HT/Music room is not under consideration, as it was all updated when the room was built. 

If anyone has important info/contradictory info on that plan, please inform. 

What I would like to know in shorthand form from the community from those who have Done upgrades:

1. Recommended Panel? Brand, any difference? 

2. I currently have sub-panel for HT/Audio room which I'm tempted to keep. I understand that this is a good move. 
Electrician can sum all into a larger panel, but I have reservations. Comments/recommendations? 

3. Particular wiring/breakers for panel/sub-panel for audio use? 

4. Particular surge protector recommend. 

As the topic has been covered much, notation form comments are welcome. Thanks for helping! 


douglas_schroeder

Showing 1 response by millercarbon

Right.(falconquest, not the other one) My experience is the more direct the better. The main advantage of a dedicated line is not the ability to provide more current. Our systems do not require anywhere near even a 15A draw let alone 20A. What we want is clean. The greatest source of noise by far is all the other wires in the house, and all the connections on the system circuit.

Normal house circuits are wired outlet to outlet. Every one of these outlet connections creates a little eddy current the power must go through on the way to the system. These connections are also a source of a lot of noise from micro-arcing . Eliminating all these extra connections is the single greatest advantage to running a dedicated line.

The next problem is every wire is an antenna, and all the wires in the house are connected to the same panel. So the more circuits and connections the more noise. This right here is the number one reason to not add a panel. Adding a panel is spending money to make noise worse not better. The panel does absolutely nothing to improve sound. How could it? Serious question.
This comes up a lot and every time it seems hardly anyone gets it. This in spite of the fact there’s a very simple test everyone can do to hear for themselves exactly what I am talking about. Simply go and listen to your system. Then go to the panel and flip off all the breakers not needed for the system. Go and listen again.

Flipping the breakers disconnected all the hot leads, roughly half the wire in the house. The other half, the neutral wires, those are all still connected together at the neutral bus bar in the panel. Don’t take my word for it, remove the cover and see for yourself. Its how they are all wired. Flipping off the breaker disconnected less than half the wires. Even so it was a huge and easy to hear difference. I know. I’ve demo’d this for people. Always they are shocked how much difference this makes.

Adding a panel is adding wires. When what you want is less wires not more. Again, don’t take my word for it. Takes like 10 minutes to try this and then you will know. How many will actually try? Based on past experience almost none. Most would rather pay big bucks for stuff they don’t need than spend even 10 minutes trying to understand what is going on. Oh well.