Ground for devices

[Peter63]

Hello Naim user.
I live in an apartment where I only have 230 volts, without earth. I find that Naim in many cases recommends earth for some of their devices. For example, Nap 250 would like to have ground in the Main socket
Now I’m probably asking a bit tentatively. Will it be sufficient to run a small ground wire from the chassis to my radiator, which as you know is ground…?
I experience hum from Nap 250, and I think I might be able to alleviate it a bit with ground.

Regards Peter

[Mr.M]

Where are you in the world firstly. Even if you aren’t provided an earth by your mains supplier for whatever reason you can bond to earth locally, your gas and water should be regardless and your mains AC supply can be as well from your supply/consumer unit.

[feeling_zen]

There are a few things to unpack here. Lack of mains earth is fairly common, even for new residential builds in Sweden and Japan and perhaps a few others.

• If the item requires a safety earth, it must not be used without a mains earth installed and tested by an electrician to meet the earth potential requirements of the country. Naim products are not double insulated so an earth should be considered mandatory.
• You may find there is an earth pin located somewhere like where the washing machine or refrigerator mains socket is. A sort of screw terminal. You can in fact, to meet the safety requirements, run an earth lead from that to where the hifi is and connect it to a mains block that has an earth screw on one end. Many heavy duty mains blocks do have this. Do NOT connect a mains earth directly to the earth screw on the chassis. That is for signal ground, not mains ground. They are not the same thing, even though they go to the same place eventually on Naim amps.
• The humming of the 250 will not be affected by the earth. This is generally caused by other problems with the mains supply such as significant over voltage and/or DC offset. The former being more common.

I’ve lived in apartments with no mains earth on and off for 20 years. Including temporary housing where I am now. I actually have an earth wire going to the proper earth pin in the kitchen and it hugs about 20m of skirting board through several rooms before it gets to the hifi and bonds to the earth screw on a mains strip/block as suggested above.

[Proterra]

If you have no Earth does that mean that major appliances such as Cookers ,washers etc aren’t earthed,
Surely that’s dangerous if a fault occurs then the outer case could become live.
Whereas with a Earth it would just trip out the arch or blow a fuse .
Glad the Uk system is earthed.

[Yeti]

The flat I moved into a couple of years ago in France had no earth connection for the sockets anywhere but the kitchen, bathroom (where there was washing machine point) and an outside socket on the balcony. The earth wire for the balcony ran past the back of the socket I wanted to plug the hifi into, there was even a loop of slack in it to break into and an earth tester confirmed its ffectiveness.

The next move was to my current house. This has earthed sockets and a rod in the ground earth, or at least it did when I tested them but when EDF-ENR installed solar panels they managed to cut it, unbeknownst to me. It was discovered when I had an electrician install a new breaker board.
I didn’t immediately notice the effect of the lack of earth when I plugged the system back in after EDF-ENRs visit. I was expecting it to need to warm up and there was now internet over power between the garage and my router in the next room so plenty to blame for any degradation, however, when the earth was restored the improvement was obvious, despite me not yet getting around to replacing the power polluting internet bodge.

[Peter63]

Good evening feeling_zen

Thank you very much for creative solutions. I live in Denmark, and as far as I know there is no mains earth to the sockets in the apartments in the building, other than for a washing machine.

Peter