Dedicated radial circuits

That’s part of the fun :grin:

Lovely spot, my family go back through the generations on the Island, with roots in Chale.
Not based there anymore but back fairly often to see friends and family, as you do!

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It reminds me of filling in those Panini Sticker books when I was a kid, just wanting to get that one damned silver foil sticker than no one ever had, and staring at a pile of Glenn Hoddles every day, sighing woefully.

Talking of Spurs…

I feel it’s more like buying the Sticker book on it’s own merit knowing that you can choose which stickers to buy as more funds become available :sunglasses:

Seriously though, with that stack of full fat Fraim and SN3 on its way, you need you get yourself a 10mm dedicated radial supply. It is the silver foil sticker of any HiFi system :rofl:

I’ve got one of those already, that went in a few years back!
I actually dug a trench myself to the pavement to run new mains in from the main feed believe it or not, did the gas at the same time!

Happy days then :grin: Enjoy your latest stickers when they arrive.

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Is that a medieval ballistic missile on the launch pad?

Blimey, they were so very advanced for the times back then :smiley:

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Hi Geko,

Glad to hear somebody else has had the same outcome. FYI I came across a sparky at a Hi-Fi show in Bristol about ten years ago and he was installing armoured cable circuits which he reckoned were better - I think he was probably right. I certainly found that there was a big drop in background noise - was that the same for you?

Yep, exactly the same for me. A massive drop in ‘noise’ and a real lift in frequency extremes. I’m also lucky that my supply comes directly from HV over-head cables via LV transformer, trench to kiosk next to house. Nearest neighbour is about 500m away.

I also added some additional earthing rods in a circular array around the original one and soldered earthing cable from the center rod in a star like pattern around it. This gave another interesting lift in performance.

Did it sound noticeably better than before?

Good question, a lot has changed as well as the mains supply, apart from the HiCap pretty much everything else has moved/changed. Certainly the transformers hummed less and if anything it open up the sound a bit likely with less noise coming in from the rest of the house.
Mine is just on it’s own MCB in the single consumer unit. I could have put in a separate CU with it’s own MCB but I’m not a purist with a £200k system so Intend to balance budget against common sense!
I ran the radial in at that time as I was rewiring the house and ripping up floors so it just got tagged on to that work rather than a project in its own right.
I did move the main fuse and dug a new trench out to the street to tidy up the feed coming in so in doing that it all got replaced and I had the grounding checked again to ensure low resistance to earth.
You have a lot of options here inevitably, you can use different cable types, run a new CU in, single socket, multiple radials and so on.
I think if I did it again and given the distance between the MCB and the sockets is literally a few meters I’d probably just use 6mm T&E as getting the 10mm T&E that connected up to the faceplates was challenging. I doubt anyone would tell a difference between 6 and 10mm cables but then I’m sure someone will pip in saying it’s “night and day” with “blacker blacks” :slight_smile:
I’m glad I did it and it’s been working well with no apparent noise issues.

Thanks Mr M.
May I ask whether you are a qualified electrician, by any chance?
Or a dedicated amateur?

I’m an electronics engineer but not a qualified electrician. I just did the messy bits with the cable runs and trench digging. The rest was done by a local spark who’s done pretty much all the certificated work in my current home.
All the mains literally back to the pavement has been replaced and so is up to date and signed off against current installation regulations (UK)

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Interesting. Unfortunately I can`t do that here as I am in the middle of a city! Have you ever grounded all of your kit back to an earth terminal via their case screws, etc?

The electrician came today and was generally receptive. Baulked a bit at armoured cable but that was likely due to this being a v old house and complications in laying it.

Coincidentally, I ran the circuit diagrams past a friend of mine in the local pub last night who is a high end electrical consultant. He immediately got the need for rfi shielding, dirty mains and the earthing benefits but basically said this would be the type of thing you do for a server farm or hospital.

Anyhow, he got back in touch today asking for the diagram again as he wanted to run it past a colleague. Turns out the colleague is a neighbour of a Naim engineer who very kindly took the time to reply. A tiny and shrinking world.

I post this below for you:

“You’re not mad! See below:- Hi (name redacted), That meets with approval here! We recently rewired our demo room with a similar approach.

There are two schools of thought WRT to sound quality. One is to have all the HiFi gear connected to a single spur, the other is to connect source components (CD players, streamers etc) to one spur and amplification to a second. The customer should try both and see what they prefer. For ultimate sound quality the new CU could have it’s own earth spike (big improvement apparently), just depends what lengths the customer is willing to go to. We did tons of listening to different consumer units and MCB/RCD devices. We ended up using Hager for best performance - yes I know, it sounds crazy but different MCBs sound different! I think we have unstitched M&K sockets throughout, again were chosen for best sound quality.

See pics attached for which model Hager devices we recommend and a pic of our listening room that the CU pictured feeds

Name redacted”

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For those of you that have done this, something I have noticed and I urge you all to try, as for myself if made a very audible improvement over how my electrician left it was…

The main live and neutral cables coming from the main consumer unit to the Hifi consumer unit, pull them away from one another so they are not touching each other.

Big difference and easily done!

Surprised no one setup a battery bank with an inverter as a power source, Tesla Powerwall on a dedicated distribution radial perhaps.
In theory you could feed the batteries off the mains grid if needed then use a commercial grade voltage regulating Inverter and cable it specifically to drive kit on a Hi-Fi radial. You’d certainly get clean AC that way and delivered locally from a controlled source that and a separate dedicated earth bonding with it’s own earthing electrode to minimise resistance to ground and you’re good to go!
In principle you could go one step further and run it all off DC without any AC power supplies.

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Tails feeding a consumer unit are meant to be secured to prevent movement now and are usually fixed to the wall. Take care that moving them does not compromise the connections.

The live and neutral travel together in very close proximity within the same cable for possibly miles before they reach your house!

It’s one thing to add a supplimentry earth electrode to the radial socket but be very wary of attempting to provide your own earthing system. The impedance required to meet the UK regs for automatic disconnection of supply are quite stringent. Consult an 18th edition qualified electrician.