Calling all electricians for advice on wiring home

Your story reminds me of when I went under my house a few years ago to run the PVC pipe for my long runs of interconnect.

I had been in total darkness for about half an hour, except for the small flashlight that was resting between my face and the earth. I could only see a few feet beyond that small pool of light.

I sensed something moving off to my left and turned my head. In the dark I could see two glowing eyes moving slowly toward me. I banged my head on the 2X4 runners reaching my hand around to grip the flashlight and when I aimed the beam toward the light I saw my tortoise shell colored kitty cat smiling at me.

I still can't believe she jumped into the scuttle hole to find me. I was never so glad to see a cat in my life.

Albert: I cracked up when i read your story. I bet you got "a little excited" when you saw "glow in the dark" eyes coming at you, especially eyes that big. With our minds working the way that they do and you being in such a dark and dirty space, i bet that your imagination was primed and ready to go. My guess is that the first thing that came to mind when you saw those eyes was trying to imagine the size of the "mouse" that went along with eyes that big. I think we all know why you hit your head in such a situation : ) Sean
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PS... If one is going to run lines under the house in a dirt crawlspace, why not connect your ground line directly to a ground rod in the crawlspace directly under the floor where the outlets are? This would provide both a phenomenally short path to ground and year round weather protection for the connections to ground. To be safe though and meet local code, you should tie the audio system ground rod back into the grounding system used for the AC mains. While tieing the two ground rods together, clean and weatherproof the connections of the original ground rod used for the mains. All of this is based on the idea that one would be able to drive a ground rod into the soil in their crawlspace, which might not be all that feasible in some situations.

You guys are too much!! Some great advice out there. My last question is...given 3 dedicated circuits, how many of you use power conditioning devices beyond the dedicated lines? I can't afford 3 dedicated conditioners (Use 1 Audioprism Foundation III now) so what might you choose and on what circuit would you put it? Thanks again. Dave.

Albert,

LOL - I cracked up laughing, picturing you in a similar situation to mine, & seeing those retinas reflecting back at you. Luckily my crawl space isn't as pitch black, just a much reduced visibilty for my aging eyes (I bumped my noggin more than once). My dog, Sweety, came in looking for me a couple times too.

Sean,

In my case, it was hard enough digging in lava rock & dirt where I had room to manuever. Besides, unless one were to dig a trench, and lay the 8' ground rod in it, or placing it at an extreme angle, there isn't enough room to insert that 5/8" X 8' ground rod from within the crawl space. Besides, my two ground rods are immediately outside the wall of where the electrical boxes on the LR wall are located. The runs to the ground rods are only 4' each (with 18 -20' between rods).

CanucksO,

With my three dedicated lines, I still am using two BPT 3.5 Sign.+ conditioners - 1 for front end, and one on my amp., plus a PS Audio UO for my video. I will give Albert's suggestion a try though, of by-passing them, and plugging straight into the wall, and see if I hear a difference. I'm hoping that I don't, because we have enough lightning storms, black outs, spikes, etc. with our poor electricity, that it would scare the bejesus out of me to leave my components plugged in unprotected.

Thanks.

Skip

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Is there a need to use shielded 10 gauge solid copper wire vs regular 10 guage copper from Home Depot (Romex or equivalent) when putting in dedicated lines? Thanks. Dave