daisy chaining power strips

[bobbyb13]

 
I'm surprised it took us this long to achieve this place in this thread.

I should have taken pictures of the last house I demoed.
There were a few places someone used lamp cord to pass through the floor from below, there were live wires cut and just left sticking out of the walls in a few places, wires nutted together inside the walls...

Amazing it nevee burned down with all the rat activity in that joint.

[tony.silveira]

thank you all for the feedback and the direction, i'm getting a few quotes to do this right.

as i work on my calculator, a quick question on subwoofers.  my klipsch r-12sw says it "delivers 400 watts of power".  i'm assuming that's what it is drawing then?

until i get this wired right, i'm only turning on strips as they are needed (not daisy chained) and ensuring that each strip doesn't get near the full draw.

[Mike A]

my klipsch r-12sw says it "delivers 400 watts of power".  i'm assuming that's what it is drawing then?

Now I know you are ---smurfing--- with us.

[tony.silveira]

when it comes to amps/watts/volts, it's all greek to me man.  if that was an ignorant question... just trying to learn something that is really foreign to me. 

[Mike A]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk0fGHsCEzGig-rSzkfCjMw

These videos are good.

Watch some of them.

[tony.silveira]

man, thank you for the resource, much MUCH appreciated!

[bobbyb13]

Watts is the amount of electrons something is using up.
Amps is the pressure/rate of delivery under which those electrons are allowed to be delivered.

A standard meter panel in a residential setting has the POTENTIAL to deliver at least 100 amps of power- which if sent through any individual circuit in your house would immediately roast the wire.

By means of all those breakers, that 100 amps is divided into smaller doses that our devices and the wire in your walls can handle without melting and shorting and causing a fire.

If you create the path, the electrons will flow, until they find use or blow something up.

Watts = voltage × amps

The Klipsch...
400 watts ÷ 120 Volts = 3.3333333 amps

If you play Big Bottom with that thing turned up to 11 it could potentially draw a max of 3.33333 amps at some point in big bass hits in the song.
But it's not likely to ever use that much juice (even for portions of a second.)

Unless you will run a welder or huge air conditioner in your game room you are talking about always using 120 volt power.
Forget about the wattage already unless you feel like doing all the math.
 
You need to know what the devices can potentially draw in amps and with a room of mostly A1Ups and a few other things then probably two seperate 20 amp circuits with games split up evenly is plenty.

Watch what MikeA posted.

[PL1]

Watts is the amount of electrons something is using up.
Amps is the pressure/rate of delivery under which those electrons are allowed to be delivered.

Sorry, but that's not an accurate description of those units of measurement.

Amperage is the amount of electrons flowing through the circuit.
- In plumbing terms, it is the equivalent of gallons of water.

Voltage is the difference of electrical potential between two points.  It is a measure of the electromotive force.
- In plumbing terms, it is the equivalent of water pressure.

As you mentioned Watts = Volts * Amps.
- In plumbing terms, the amount of work you can do (Watts) depends on the amount of water (Amps) and the pressure pushing that water. (Volts)
- A high voltage low Amp circuit is like a pressure washer.
- A low voltage high Amp circuit is like a river.


Scott

[Ond]

Ahh the old water analogy for electrical theory.  Now someone explain ac vs dc and ac rms vs ac peak to peak.   

[Zebidee]

^^ This is what I love about this community

[Zebidee]

I also recommend this this Washington Technical College series of videos featuring Joe Gryniuk for basic electronics understanding:

[bobbyb13]

Watts is the amount of electrons something is using up.
Amps is the pressure/rate of delivery under which those electrons are allowed to be delivered.

Sorry, but that's not an accurate description of those units of measurement.

Amperage is the amount of electrons flowing through the circuit.
- In plumbing terms, it is the equivalent of gallons of water.

Voltage is the difference of electrical potential between two points.  It is a measure of the electromotive force.
- In plumbing terms, it is the equivalent of water pressure.

As you mentioned Watts = Volts * Amps.
- In plumbing terms, the amount of work you can do (Watts) depends on the amount of water (Amps) and the pressure pushing that water. (Volts)
- A high voltage low Amp circuit is like a pressure washer.
- A low voltage high Amp circuit is like a river.


Scott

Yes...
Thank you Scott.
I had to go back and read what I wrote again to see I had confused those when typing.
 
Been a long while since class and I never think like an engineer I suppose.

[Gilrock]

If you really want to blow your mind....the electrons actually flow the opposite direction of the current.

[bobbyb13]

If you really want to blow your mind....the electrons actually flow the opposite direction of the current.

Right?!
Electricity gets nuts quickly.

Trying to tell people that battery poles are labeled incorrectly on purpose is a real head scratcher.

[Zebidee]

.

[Ond]

I blame Edison, he's the one who got it wrong in the first place.

It always amazes me is that anybody would listen seriously to a guy that deliberately goes out and flies a kite during a thunderstorm. He also promoted long-distance transmission of power via DC (vs AC, which is waaaay better, simply because his main competitor [Tesla] preferred AC... because he was talking about).

Don't even get me started on the deliberate sabotage done to Tesla's lab. We might not have had the forensic tech then to prove who did it, but we can guess well enough.

I think it was Benjamin Franklin who supposedly flew a kite during a thunderstorm to collect electricity in a jar. Edison definitely tried to undermine Tesla though with public displays of the 'dangers' of AC using animals as demonstration subjects. Edison was a trickysy businessman inventor, Tesla was a genius dreamer...

[Zebidee]

Yeah you're right, I mixed them up.

[bobbyb13]

Tesla was a brilliant scientist and visionary.

Edison was a brilliant businessman.

You can imagine who I like better of the two.
 

[Zebidee]

Imagine if they had decided to be buddies and cooperated, we might have solved global warming by now

[bobbyb13]

Edison was greedy, and jealous.

Maybe we could at least be getting energy from molten salt reactors instead of the toxic unsustainable shitshow we have now.

[tony.silveira]

well *some* good news...

house hasnt burned down yet

Seriously though, i did a map of the room and one of my outlets is on the breaker to the guest room next door which never has anything on.  so i moved my arcade1up's (0.3 amps each, 2.10 amps total) along with my digital pinball (meter fluctuates from mid 3's to high 4's so I'm rating it at 5 amps) and my main mame cabinet (same draws as pinball, so i'm giving it 5).  so that's a total of 12.1 but that's if everything is running, which doesn't happen.

the main mame has a mini fridge which can peak the amps up to 8 when it kicks on so i am leaving the fridge on a different breaker for now.

so for now, i am being extremely careful of whats plugged in and on until i get that electrician out.

i just wanted to thank you all again for the education

[bobbyb13]

Sounds like you should be good.

Just knowing what the amp draw is, keeping to the 80% rule and making sure you don't use extension cords or power strips with under-rated wire should keep it all safe.

Good on ya for thinking/caring enough to ask of course!

[Teh Lurv]

You would need a meter that has an "amp clamp" to check draw when a device is energized.
The cheapest fluke I found and use every day was about $300.
Unless you really want a meter like that I would do a little google-fu about your cabinets and other stuff and see what you find.

For what he's doing, a dedicated inline meter similar to this one is easier and less expensive.   

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Meter-Kill-Hx2-3-Wx1-5/dp/B00R03CVEI/




Scott

Before anyone spends money on a Kill-a-Watt, check with your local library. I know my local library has Kill-a-Watts you can check out like a book.

I having nothing else to add other than my own surge protector daisy chain story. Back in 2000 I was working part-time at my college's academic resource center. The center recently received a dozen PII PCs which were all set up in converted study alcove desks, with those old fashioned pizza box shaped surge protectors sitting under the CRT monitor. It was spring and most of the PCs were in use by students working on papers, etc, but the center was otherwise slow. I decided to spend some work downtime by sitting down at the PC by the wall and browse the Internet. After a few minutes, the PC completely froze up with not even the reset or power button working. Frustrated, I toggled the surge protector switch under the monitor and heard panicked screaming coming from the rest of the alcoves. Everyone's PCs had shut down, costing them whatever work they hadn't yet saved to their floppy disks. I looked behind the alcove and realized whoever set up these PCs had daisy chained all the surge protectors to mine, which was the only one actually plugged into the wall. Once I realized what I had done and realized no one else saw me, I quietly got up from my seat and made myself scarce for the rest of my shift.

[pbj]

Libraries are where homeless people shave and go BM.

[Zebidee]

Yeah, libraries provide access to a surprising variety of essential information and community services. Especially for the last 10-20% or so of people in most developed nations that have limited access otherwise (for a range of reasons, not just poverty). Often underappreciated except when needed. Worth visiting your local libraries occasionally just to see what they have to offer.