Lowering House Grounding Impedance

To be clear, you are not allowed to willy nilly use a random new ground. 

You may add ground rods, but all must be bonded together. This ground should be bonded to the neutral at exactly one place: The service entrance. 

Anything else is a life safety issue and prohibited. 

Best,

E

spatialking95 posts12-05-2018 11:19pm

I have. I added a clean ground to my system, rather than use the house ground. I was amazed at how clean FM reception became. I had two FM tuners, one analog and the other digital but both improved significantly. Not only was it cleaner, the music was more coherent as well. I did not hear any improvement on the other sources though.

Not sure why the isolated earth ground connection would increase the reception. I would suggest lifting the isolated ground entirely and listen for any changes one way or the other. My guess is you won’t hear any difference .

As for the electrical safety aspect of the isolated earthed electrode you have now you do not have a low resistive path for ground fault current to return to the source in the event of a hot line to chassis fault.
You also have a greater chance of a nearby lightning strike transient interring on the isolated earth electrode and damaging your audio equipment.

If you want to experiment with a separate earthed ground rod and still meet electrical safety code you can but it must be connected to the branch circuit equipment grounding conductor. The branch circuit equipment grounding conductor must not be lifted from the source electrical panel equipment ground bar. The NEC calls this grounding electrode an "Auxiliary Grounding Electrode". 2017 NEC 250.54.... I would not recommend it though. It just adds another path for a near by lightning high voltage transient not to mention more mother earth noise on your audio equipment.

If you think you need a better connection to mother earth for lightning protection, there in a lower soil resistance, (IEEE recommends 5 ohms or less), you can drive as many ground rods as you want. That is providing they all tie together with a minimum copper wire size of #6awg and then is connected, bonded, to the electrical service entrance neutral conductor. The same point as the existing grounding electrode conductor that is connected to earth.
Jim

It needs to be said that my grounding exceeds code requirements with everything bonded together and hooked up by a licensed electrician. I bought the materials and drove the rods but I let a licensed professional do the final hookup so I have a receipt. I vehemently concur with all here that there can only be one grounding path, with all rods properly bonded together! I started my journey to a lower grounding potential while looking at some of the Nordost products, one of which advocates an additional ground! They do have a caveat in their literature but I can’t immagine what would happen if a close by lightning strike tried to equalize its potential through my house to the other ground. I’m no engineer but I’m going to bet you would be lucky if it just wrecked your gear and didn’t burn the house down. Moreover, I’m sure the insurance adjuster would be happy to find that he could avoid paying out due to a not to code grounding solution.

What you described is the code requirement currently, as I understand it. The grounding connection is a safety requirement. Barring an electrical issue, it shouldn't be doing anything at all. Again, that's how I understand it.

An aftermarket power cord, higher grade wall receptacle, or fuse built for audio purposes shouldn’t be doing anything either - but they do. I don’t understand it either but I can tell you that I listened, went and did the work to effect a good low impedance ground, then listened again and heard a difference. Without telling her what to listen for, I asked my wife if she heard anything different and she identified the same “removal of haze” as I had heard and I’m pretty sure I’ve never even used that terminology around her.