Hi,
I have an additional question on star grounding...
While I do understand the principles behind it (and the necessity of it), I was wondering whether the following topology is also considered a safe way to execute this.
I will basically have two rooms: the control room and the live room.
In the CR I would like to have 4 circuits: 1 to power the monitors, 1 to power the console and outboard, 1 to power the PC and stuff, and a lost one to power other stuff like lava lamps, cellphone adapters, etc...
In the LR I will have only one circuit.
It speaks for itself that each circuit will have several outlets, spaced around the room (and well-labeled).
For me it would be very practical if I could do the grounding as in the attached diagram (i'll post them shortly, I have some trouble with drawing them on my new PC with no good SW). It basically boils down to having several star points (per circuit) that then finally come together in the main board.
The reason is that here in Belgium we work mostly with prewired conduits, containing 3 wires (one of them to be used ground). I have no problem running a conduit from each and every outlet to a kind of a subboard within each room and then for each circuit in each room to the main board where the actual circuit breakers will be. This would help me a) having less wires in the main board to connect within the limited space, and b) running the wires from the main board to the subboards in the new slab, without having to decide on the exact postion of the outlets without having build the actual walls, if you know what I mean.
So, does a configuration as in my drawing still count as a star grounding scheme? Should I go for the included alternative? Or should I go the full monty and run a ground wire from each and every outlet to the main board?
Many thanks for your advice.
Greetings,
Bert
I would go with the first drawing, with the exception of wiring the "live room" to the "control room" breaker panel. The less wire between any and all audio equipment the better.
No - The idea of star earthing is that each power outlet has it's own direct back to the power board earth wire so each outlet sees ground directly, not viia the adjacent outlet.
it sounds like you are saying just use a regular outlet and do home runs for the grounds. that's super easy.
so what's the fuss about isolated ground receptacles?
As I wrote last year: Isolated grounds are good if your power wires are in metal conduit, but not needed if you have non-metallic (NM or Romex) power cables. The Hot, Neutral and Safety Ground wires should be in close proximity to each other and have a one to one to one relationship. If at some location, you split "Y" the Hot wires then the Neutral and Safety Ground wires should be split at that same point. If at your breaker box, an individual circuit breaker has one Hot wire leaving the box then that breaker should have exactly one Neutral and one Safety Ground wire leaving the box. Any one circuit should be wired so that it has as short as possible Safety Ground wires from outlet to outlet.
