Isolation Transformer questions

[sonolink]

Hello,
I am building a mixing room inside a detached house, in the basement. To disconnect all the "technical" part of the studio from the house to avoid electrical noise, etc, I though I could use one of the outlets in the room to connect to it an isolation transformer and connect to its output the "technical" studio (PCs, amps, speakers, etc).


So, my 2 questions are:

1-Is this a good solution to prevent electrical problems?
2-How do I disconnect Ground? My house floor and the basement walls are made of pure concrete. I can't see a way of using a rod in the garden. Any ideas?

Thanks for your time and help

[Soundman2020]

As long as you don't overload the circuit, that will work. In other words, if the outlet that you use is rated at 15 amps, then you cannot draw any more than 15 amps from it, but you also have to consider what ELSE might be on the same circuit already. Try this: turn on everything in your house, then trip the circuit breakers on your main distribution panel, one at a time until you find the one that cuts off that outlet. Then check around the house to find what else got cut off. Add up the current draw of all of the things on that circuit, subtract that number from the current rating of the circuit breaker that you tripped, and the number that you are left with is the absolute maximum that you can draw in your studio. But do leave a safety margin! EXAMPLE: your breaker is rated at 15 amps, all of the other stuff on the circuit is rated at 7 amps, so you are left with a total of 8 amps MAXIMUM. Leave a roughly 20% margin, so you can draw around 6 amps for your studio. I think Spain is 220 volts, so in this example you'd have roughly 1 kilowatt of power available.

Regarding the ground: provided that you still use star-grounding centered on the ground tap for the isolation transformer itself, then you should be fine. If that's all you have, then that's all you can do! You'll just have to be careful to not connect anything that is on another circuit to your circuit, such as for example by plugging in an amp somewhere else in the house, then hooking that up to your console...

It's not ideal, but if you don't have any alternative, then you can live with it.


- Stuart -

[sonolink]

Thanks for your reply Stuart
I managed to speak to the electrician that made the electrical installation of the house. I have now one breaker for the studio gear on its own

[Soundman2020]

Great! Then you have the full capacity of that circuit all for you! So it should be easy to hook up an isolation transformer now.

- Stuart -