one dedicated line or two?

Pb Blimp

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We usually do not realize that the Torus power transformer is much more that just a mains transformer - it includes a third coil connected to a network. This clever system eliminates noise from mains without contaminating the ground line - a patented development of Menno van der Veen, also know for his high quality designs of output tube transformers. See http://www.google.com.gi/patents/US6087822. After reading it I remembered of the egg of Columbus - it looks so logical!

We can expect that such system would react to grounding systems differently from other type of conditioners - IMHO only experience can tell us which way to go.

Yes I am aware of the claims by Torus (Menno) in this regard but have not done the comparison to an off the shelf isolation transformer. My guess is a large part of the benefits observed would come from any large local transformer (Equitech or otherwise) cleaning up the mains and sinking noise from components through its virtually nil output impedance (along with the large instantaneous current and, of course, a good grounding scheme). Torus uses very good quality (Piltron) transformers and add ons like voltage regulation and Menno cleanup certainly don't hurt. All I know is it works.
 

Speedskater

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Sep 30, 2010
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Oh dear Paul ,that's a lot of misunderstandings. Let me try to clear up a few.

a] A circuit breaker has two tasks:
(1) To trip in an over-current situation. Say pulling 25A thru a 20A circuit breaker.
In this case all the current is flowing thru the Hot & Neutral conductors.
(2) To trip during a ground fault situation. That's a short when the Hot conductor comes in contact with the chassis.
Then all the fault current flows thru the Hot & Safety Ground.

Note: The circuit breaker will not trip if a human touches the Hot & Neutral.
That's the job of the GFCI, RCD or ELCB.

In an AC power system, Planet Earth is neither the source nor the destination for electric current. All the current flows between the Hot & Neutral source. Which in our case is that big power transformer down the street. Although that current may use Planet Earth as a path back to that source if no better paths (like wires) are available.

From a hi-fi system point of view, the connection to Planet Earth does not enter the picture. That connection is only there for safety during unusual events.
 

Pb Blimp

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Oct 30, 2017
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Oh dear Paul ,that's a lot of misunderstandings. Let me try to clear up a few.

a] A circuit breaker has two tasks:
(1) To trip in an over-current situation. Say pulling 25A thru a 20A circuit breaker.
In this case all the current is flowing thru the Hot & Neutral conductors.
(2) To trip during a ground fault situation. That's a short when the Hot conductor comes in contact with the chassis.
Then all the fault current flows thru the Hot & Safety Ground.

The circuit breaker will not trip if a human touches the Hot & Neutral.
That's the job of the GFCI, RCD or ELCB.

In an AC power system, Planet Earth is neither the source nor the destination for electric current. All the current flows between the Hot & Neutral source. Which in our case is that big power transformer down the street. Although that current may use Planet Earth as a path back to that source if no better paths (like wires) are available.

From a hi-fi system point of view, the connection to Planet Earth does not enter the picture. That connection is only there for safety during unusual events.

Kevin,

Sorry to beat a dead horse but my point was different than what you seem to be explaining. I may not have written clearly. Sorry for that.

First off, of course you protect a human with a GFI, but that is NOT because a circuit breaker won't trip when a human shorts to local ground but because the GFI's design of measuring current delta between hot and nuetral (i.e., leak to ground) is much more precise and immediate than a simple breaker which has a much slower release and is designed to protect from heat (fires) in an overload, short, or ground earth event (be the ground earth event through the Safety Ground Wire or direct to a local ground).

That doe NOT mean that a circuit breaker will not trip when a ground fault occurs that runs straight from local ground through say the house plumbing as opposed to the Safety Ground wire; it just trips at a velocity that likely won't protect the human who touches a hot wire to a water pipe. To that end, I was merely pointing out that your initial statement was incorrect. The primary purpose of the Safety Ground is to provide a safe path in protected devices to ground NOT to trip the breaker as you indicated. The breaker will trip irrespective of any current on the actual Safety Ground wire once it sees current in excess of its rating that came from the water pipe. That was my simple point.
 

Ron Resnick

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This is what I do. One 20amp circuit to each amp, and a third to my rack/front end components.

+1

And I will be using an isolated ground, separate from the service ground, which connects the dedicated lines to a low resistance chemical ground system.
 

Speedskater

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Sep 30, 2010
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Kevin,Sorry to beat a dead horse but my point was different than what you seem to be explaining. I may not have written clearly. Sorry for that.

First off, of course you protect a human with a GFI, but that is NOT because a circuit breaker won't trip when a human shorts to local ground
Of course the breaker won't trip if a human touches both the Hot & Neutral or Hot & ground. It takes a very low resistance to draw 15 or 20 Amps.

but because the GFI's design of measuring current delta between hot and neutral (i.e., leak to ground) is much more precise and immediate than a simple breaker which has a much slower release and is designed to protect from heat (fires) in an overload, short, or ground earth event (be the ground earth event through the Safety Ground Wire or direct to a local ground).
That's almost correct. The GFI looks at the delta between the Hot & Neutral. If the is a difference of more than a few mA it trips. It doesn't ask as to where the leakage is going. It might be leaking into another circuit.

That does NOT mean that a circuit breaker will not trip when a ground fault occurs that runs straight from local ground through say the house plumbing as opposed to the Safety Ground wire; it just trips at a velocity that likely won't protect the human who touches a hot wire to a water pipe.
Remember the Safety Ground and/or water pipe is just a path, the destination is the Neutral in the main breaker box. It's not directly for human shock protection, just indirectly if the chassis becomes hot.

To that end, I was merely pointing out that your initial statement was incorrect. The primary purpose of the Safety Ground is to provide a safe path in protected devices to ground NOT to trip the breaker as you indicated. The breaker will trip irrespective of any current on the actual Safety Ground wire once it sees current in excess of its rating that came from the water pipe. That was my simple point.
No. The main task of the Safety Ground is to provide a path back to the Neutral in the case of a ground fault (short circuit of the Hot to the chassis) so that the breaker will trip.

Your AC power has little interest in Planet Earth.
 

Pb Blimp

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Oct 30, 2017
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Kevin,

You are off on a lot of tangents. Some right, some wrong, but all irrelevant to my simple point. If you connect a hot wire to a local ground the breaker will trip. The local ground can be a body of water, a pipe in the ground, a wet human with their feet in a swimming pool, it doesn't matter. This has nothing to do with whether a Safety Ground wire back to the main panel even exists in the wiring system.

Hot wires have a positive charge; electrons have a negative charge. Hot terminals act like a vacuum attracting electrons from any earth ground path anywhere it come in contact. Certainly you understand this concept.
 
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Chuck Lee

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Feb 5, 2015
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Hot wire to a water pipe?
I once ran single dedicated lines to my Acoustat servo amps,20 amp breakers, #10 wire.The other line was for all the source gear.
Nice sound.
Then decided to separate the Esoteric sacd from the Manley phono stage and run both amps on one dedicated line.
Nice sound.
Got the Torus and my electrician friend who has one said, plug everything into it and run one dedicated line and then run a line from the Torus ground post to the main water pipe.
Nicest sound.
In my case, I found that 3 dedicated lines ,ideal in theory,wasn't as good in practise.
In fact I believe ol Mikey F,is back to a simpler approach.I just read today in Pos.Feedback that someone there has also left the multiple dedicated lines camp.
I don't know the scientific reasons why it sounds better to me(perhaps the common ground )but this is the way I like my music to sound.
I would just be speculating but I'll bet there are timing issues with running multiple lines.
 

Speedskater

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Sep 30, 2010
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Kevin,
You are off on a lot of tangents. Some right, some wrong, but all irrelevant to my simple point. If you connect a hot wire to a local ground the breaker will trip. The local ground can be a body of water, a pipe in the ground,..............., it doesn't matter. This has nothing to do with whether a Safety Ground wire back to the main panel even exists in the wiring system.
That will only happen if there is a low resistance path back to the Neutral.
A ground rod often doesn't have a low enough resistance path back to the Neutral to quickly trip the circuit breaker (if it trips at all).

a wet human with their feet in a swimming pool
This just won't ever happen!

Hot wires have a positive charge; electrons have a negative charge. Hot terminals act like a vacuum attracting electrons from any earth ground path anywhere it come in contact. Certainly you understand this concept.
We are talking about an AC system in this thread.
But even in a DC system Planet Earth has little to do with it.
 

microstrip

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Kevin,

You are off on a lot of tangents. Some right, some wrong, but all irrelevant to my simple point. If you connect a hot wire to a local ground the breaker will trip. The local ground can be a body of water, a pipe in the ground, a wet human with their feet in a swimming pool, it doesn't matter. This has nothing to do with whether a Safety Ground wire back to the main panel even exists in the wiring system.

Hot wires have a positive charge; electrons have a negative charge. Hot terminals act like a vacuum attracting electrons from any earth ground path anywhere it come in contact. Certainly you understand this concept.

Are you joking?:confused::confused::confused:
 

Pb Blimp

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That will only happen if there is a low resistance path back to the Neutral.
A ground rod often doesn't have a low enough resistance path back to the Neutral to quickly trip the circuit breaker (if it trips at all).

At last an acknowledgement the breaker will trip!! A local ground of more than 5 Ohms is a bad ground. (NFPA and IEEE have recommended a ground resistance value of 5.0 ohms or less.) A 5 ohm ground yields 24 amps at 120 volts through the breaker. A pool of water is a small fraction of this number. You do not need to get back to the ground at the box for enough current to flow through the breaker to trip the breaker no matter how many times you want to say it is so.
 

Pb Blimp

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microstrip

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If you are more clear I would be happy to answer your question.

(...) Hot wires have a positive charge; electrons have a negative charge. Hot terminals act like a vacuum attracting electrons from any earth ground path anywhere it come in contact. Certainly you understand this concept.

Do you realize that mains is AC since the Edison / Tesla war of currents? Briefly, neutral and phase in our systems means one of the AC wires is connected to the ground.
 

Pb Blimp

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Do you realize that mains is AC since the Edison / Tesla war of currents? Briefly, neutral and phase in our systems means one of the AC wires is connected to the ground.

Of course I realize we use AC but resistance must be in place between the hot and nuetral or the breaker trips.

My DC example was meant only to demonstrate a charge movement (opposite to positive current movement) in a half cycle of AC. The purpose being to make the point clear that earth is earth and if you short the hot side of AC, whether that earth is at nuetral box or elsewhere, the breaker will trip.

So to the main and only point I have been making---Is it your position that if you short the hot wire of an AC system to a remote ground like a low resistance ground rod or a body of water that an AC breaker will not trip?
 

microstrip

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Of course I realize we use AC but resistance must be in place between the hot and nuetral or the breaker trips.

My DC example was meant only to demonstrate a charge movement (opposite to positive current movement) in a half cycle of AC. The purpose being to make the point clear that earth is earth and if you short the hot side of AC, whether that earth is at nuetral box or elsewhere, the breaker will trip.

So to the main and only point I have been making---Is it your position that if you short the hot wire of an AC system to a remote ground like a low resistance ground rod or a body of water that an AC breaker will not trip?

We have two basic types of breakers - overload circuit breakers and differential circuit breakers. Unless you say clearly what you are addressing it is impossible to understand what you mean. For electrical protection, neutral is tied to earth, that is a low resistance conductor. Although now homes are protected by differential breakers - for added safety my house has exclusively 30 mA breakers. Before them one basic rule was that the resistance to ground should be low enough to trigger the overload circuit breaker if the hot wire touched some conductor tied to ground - a very dangerous condition.

BTW, European and US electrical codes and standards are different in some aspects.
 

Pb Blimp

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We have two basic types of breakers - overload circuit breakers and differential circuit breakers. Unless you say clearly what you are addressing it is impossible to understand what you mean. For electrical protection, neutral is tied to earth, that is a low resistance conductor. Although now homes are protected by differential breakers - for added safety my house has exclusively 30 mA breakers. Before them one basic rule was that the resistance to ground should be low enough to trigger the overload circuit breaker if the hot wire touched some conductor tied to ground - a very dangerous condition.

BTW, European and US electrical codes and standards are different in some aspects.

I believe your bold says what I have been saying since my Post #40. The concept is quite simple. It is not a code issue or a breaker design issue. Its physics. If you short the hot wire in an AC electrical system to a ground anywhere on earth that has a resistance to ground low enough to run current above the breakers rating, the breaker will trip. Period. Contrary to your initial statement (which I addressed in Post #40), this concept is wholly independent of the existence of a Safety Ground wire to the main panel.

For whatever reason this is a concept I am incapable of getting you to recognize, as such I hereby surrender. Sorry for bringing it to your attention.

white-flag.jpg
 

Folsom

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Of course I realize we use AC but resistance must be in place between the hot and nuetral or the breaker trips.

My DC example was meant only to demonstrate a charge movement (opposite to positive current movement) in a half cycle of AC. The purpose being to make the point clear that earth is earth and if you short the hot side of AC, whether that earth is at nuetral box or elsewhere, the breaker will trip.

So to the main and only point I have been making---Is it your position that if you short the hot wire of an AC system to a remote ground like a low resistance ground rod or a body of water that an AC breaker will not trip?

Your breaker won't trip if your short to earth only. You need safety ground, which is what connects to the AC receptacle, from the breaker panel. Earth ground is from the breaker panel to ground rod. Earth ground is only for lightening. Earth ground maybe could trip GFCI if you bypassed safety ground, but I wouldn't expect it to, I'm just saying it might be possible.

The reason you want a low resistance earth ground is because the lower the resistance the less of an antenna it will act like. That's right, it's an antenna for noise until lightening strikes. Romex is literally designed to suppress it from spreading noise, as line and neutral squish the safety ground field size, flanking it on each side.



Imagine having a battery. You drop it in the dirt, and step on it so it's pressed in good. Does it discharge? No. Earth isn't a good conductor until you've got a 10,000,000v charge from the sky (lightening).
 

microstrip

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I believe your bold says what I have been saying since my Post #40. The concept is quite simple. It is not a code issue or a breaker design issue. Its physics. If you short the hot wire in an AC electrical system to a ground anywhere on earth that has a resistance to ground low enough to run current above the breakers rating, the breaker will trip. Period. Contrary to your initial statement (which I addressed in Post #40), this concept is wholly independent of the existence of a Safety Ground wire to the main panel.

For whatever reason this is a concept I am incapable of getting you to recognize, as such I hereby surrender. Sorry for bringing it to your attention.

The reason is simple - you state so many ambiguous and dubious concepts in your wording that no one will ever want to agree with anything you write. Particularly as you misread what other people have written, and repeat it incorrectly.

I am only writing in this thread because electrical safety is a too important subject to be described amateurish in ambiguous terms.

Again, there are several types of breakers, something you fail to acknowledge. Until you properly address them (as you go on doing) your text is ambiguous.
 

Chuck Lee

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Feb 5, 2015
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Here's what the tech at Torus said--"the ground post on the RM20 Bal is connected to:
-the incoming safety ground wire
-the ground and neutral on every rear panel receptacle on the unit
-the chassis of the unit
-the steel core of the isolation transformer and the electrostatic shields of the transformer.
"the auxillary ground connection from the RM20Bal to the main water pipe will not be a hazard.

So it's all good news .I can continue to listen to superior sound and not have to worry about the fears of others.
 

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