Of course. The room is very close to the design used by Mike Lavigne. Check out his room under the Audiogon Virtural Sytems.
Grounding Metal Outlet Boxes and Isolated Ground Receptacles
Just installed six really nice separate dedicated 20 amp lines (with 6 awg) for my new dedicated listening room. Decided to use heavy metal outlet boxes so that I could make my six Furutech Receptacles as strong and sturdy as possible. I also had my electrician run 4-wire 6 agw to the boxes so that we could have one ground wire to the metal receptacle box and then a separate ground wire to the isolated ground screw on the Furutech.
I sent some photos of the setup to a friend of mine (who just happens to be an electrical engineer) and he raised an the issue that since my Furutech Receptacles are metal and they will be screwed into the metal box with metal screws, then we have effectively now tied the two separate grounds together! Help! Is that a bad idea? Is having the box and receptacle setup in this way going to cause issues once my gear is in place; ground loop hums, etc?
I sent some photos of the setup to a friend of mine (who just happens to be an electrical engineer) and he raised an the issue that since my Furutech Receptacles are metal and they will be screwed into the metal box with metal screws, then we have effectively now tied the two separate grounds together! Help! Is that a bad idea? Is having the box and receptacle setup in this way going to cause issues once my gear is in place; ground loop hums, etc?
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I would expect that if you used a licensed electrician that all is well. Personally, when I had my electrician install 3 dedicated 20 amp lines in my home, I had him use the plastic boxes and the worked fine with the Shunyata recpticles that were installed in them. I had him use 8 gauge wire as that will handle a lot more than 20 amps. |
Please explain. I didn’t know Furutech made an isolated ground (IG) type receptacle. A true isolated grounding type receptacle has the metal supporting back strap of the receptacle insulated from the "U" shaped ground contact of the receptacle. The green equipment ground screw on the receptacle is connected only to the "U" shaped ground contact. An insulated green equipment grounding conductor, wire, connects to the green equipment ground screw and is ran with the branch circuit wiring, and connects to the ground bus in the electrical panel. If the receptacle is truly an IG receptacle NEC requires the receptacle to have an orange triangle on the front face plate. Or the face plate might be entirely orange with a triangle. Example: If the Furutech is not an IG duplex receptacle then you wasted your money installing a 3 wire with ground, I assume NM-B cable. (Romex is a trade name of NM-B) Not only did you waste your money you may find the hot and neutral current carrying conductors of the branch circuits will induce a small voltage onto the equipment ground wires. The induced voltage can cause ground loop hum. You should have used 2 wire with ground NM-B cable. Example of 6-2 with ground: https://www.wireandcableyourway.com/6-2-w-g-nm-b-wire-black.html Notice the bare equipment grounding conductor, wire, is in the middle between the Hot and neutral wires? The magnetic fields of the hot and neutral wires cancel each other out. With 6-4 wire because of the geometry, lay, of the wires inside the outer sheath, jacket, the 2 equipment ground wires you have are more likely to pick up an induced voltage by the hot or neutral or both. You may find the 6-2 with ground NM-B is 3 wires ran in a slight tight spiral twist as well. Read pages 31 through 36.http://centralindianaaes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/indy-aes-2012-seminar-w-notes-v1-0.pdf Next: http://www.middleatlantic.com/resources/white-papers.aspx Addendum to Power Distribution White Paper (87 KB) // As for the metal box. Many guys have experimented using metal and plastic boxes. There have been mixed opinions on the subject. There was an EE on Audio Asylum that ran some kind of tests and from his results he recommended plastic over steel. Here is one of his posts regarding steel boxes. http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/16/165520.html I believe Albert Porter, an Agon member, did some tests as well, just going from memory, and he went with plastic boxes for his dedicated circuits as well. Have you covered everything with drywall yet? . |
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