advice on dedicated line

Wonderful advice all, thank you. One follow up question on the issue of the ground wire. I read this on the Martin Logan site.

"The key to reducing hum and noise is to have the electrician wire only a single ground from the audio / home theater system to the electrical service panel (see figure 2). If you are installing a dedicated or multiple dedicated lines in the Home Theater it is critical that all outlets that will be attached to the A/V system be wired with the same single ground wire, and run directly to the service panel. 'Hot and neutral' wires are attached directly to the service panels dedicated power line. Do not attach anything other than the Audio and Video system to this special dedicated line. Be sure to plan for enough outlets for the electronics, speakers, sub-woofers, video and video accessories as well as the location of each outlet (subwoofers in the rear, etc). Lighting, fans and anything not directly related to the A/V system, should be attached to a separate circuit with it's own ground, connected to the service panel."

Does this mean that even if I have 2 20 amp lines, I just want one ground for them both? Or does each line have its own ground wire?

This is really a foreign language to me, so thanks again for translating!

Margot

Margot, I believe that as you appear to suspect the statement does seem to imply that if two dedicated lines are being used, the safety ground connections of their respective outlets (the U-shaped openings of the outlets) should be connected together, and in turn wired through a single ground wire back to the circuit breaker panel. However, I feel pretty certain that if that is what the statement intends to indicate, it is wrong.

While I am an electrical engineer and not an electrician, I suspect doing that would be neither code compliant nor proper practice. I suspect that your electrician will tell you that each dedicated line has to have its own safety ground connection running back to the panel together with its AC "hot" and neutral wires. (The "hot" connection, btw, being the smaller of the two vertical slots on the outlet, and the neutral connection being the longer of the two vertical slots, which is T-shaped on a 20 amp outlet).

Hopefully one of our electrician members will comment further.

Best regards,
-- Al

Thanks, Al! This makes more sense to me, and I am glad to have the advice of an electrical engineer. cheers, Margot

A 15 amp circuit is 1800 watts,a 20 amp circuit is 2400 watts. I don't know of any audio or video system that comes close to using that much power! I think this is all overkill if I am wrong please someone clue me in? I always thought it was safer to have a 15 amp circuit breaker so it would trip before frying your components! Like I said if I am wrong please explain! Thanks much