How is ideal grounding achieved for a whole house?
I know the usual techniques used, but I’m sure some perfectionists who know what they’re doing have installed groundings that are a whole lot better…
Even a certain person has each of his 9 sockets used for audio grounded separately, each with its own dedicated line. He said the grounding rods are at a circular array so as to avoid magnetic issues, he stated… Not sure of those separate grounds due to ground potential differential, BUT he has low interwinding capacitance isolation transformers for this purpose, apparently?
Does a high quality (as in, very low interwinding capacitance, etc) isolation transformer eliminate the ground differential noise issue?
I’ll take the bait because I’m in a mood tonight. I’ve built buildings for 25 years, I design the electrical systems. 2,000 sq ft to 1,000,000 sq ft and everything in between. I know a hundred smart engineers, salesman etc in the business. Do you want the dullest, yet most passionate fight of your life? Buy several bottles of whiskey and have all the talent talk about grounding. Hours later, no booze left and nothing will be agreed upon…and no fun will be had.
Edit: and I’ll add, the world won’t be better off or safer.
Hmm, that’s a suggestion I’d not act upon (about the whiskey)
But thanks for the straightly worded insight, still, I just want good grounding for my house, so if you could link me to some source of info on the subject, or papers, etc, I’d be grateful.
Code in my area is two 6’ (or is it 8’) ground rods, copper coated steel or God-forbid $olid copper, 6’ or more separated and connected with 6awg (I believe, don’t quote me) to the neutral/grounding bar. Also connected to cold water pipe.
Seems to work. I water them from time to time too.
WHY lead the ground to the cold water pipe?
What if I’m washing my hands when the lightning strikes?
??
I understand grounding a house to a lake if the house is on the shore, but does a singular household with its own well really need its ground connected to the pipe?
Actually, it occurred to me since we’re talking about a well and its supply of ground water, should I search for a farther spot from the well where the ground water vein runs, and run a copper rod ALL THE WAY down there? It seems plausible…
It’s just another connection to Earth, nothing more. Many water supply pipes are buried in the ground here so it’s another chance to improve ground for safety.
These grounds do next to nothing for protection from lightning. Lighting is finding it’s own path to ground often through the air at very high speed and hopefully you’re not nearby when it does.
Well yeah, I was a bit off with talking about lightning, but rather any additional surges that can sometimes run through the mains for whatever reason, be it a fault or nature’s doing…
Anyway, a few months past when a storm was nearby, I noted that there were huge voltage swings, enough for my DAC’s protection circuit to go. A cheaper DAC might have gone bad, they’re often very fragile circuits aren’t they…
The topic of having balanced mains for the whole house is very intriguing - common mode rejection throughout the whole length of copper in the house means, if I’m not mistaken, that the house is no longer a huge antenna network. I know that the necessity of an isolation transformer for going balanced means an impedance increase so for the whole house I’d need a huge af transformer to not have my audio system suffer.
…can I have balanced AC for everything else and have an unbalanced breaker panel just for the audio system? All of this is expensive, I hope to get rich.
brought a lightning charge INTO my house on the connected isolated circuit that the grounding rod was connected to with my Wadia 7 Transport…luckily, i have a commercial lightning protector that worked just fine***…
who would have thought that i exposed my system to lightning strikes…well, that one was about 50’ or so away from my actual house …
*** paid $370 for next day shipping, for both ways (~1995)…
their engineering department insisted i tell them what i had installed to protect my house…they didn’t charge for the parts & labor ($25 part blew up), as long as i gave them the product company’s contact info, so they could use the same in their factory showroom…