I'm a new owner of an old house in Maryland and want to get it up to
21st century electrical standards. I'm an avid computer/gadget user and have so many things to plug in around my desk, I end up having 2 or 3 power strips in tandem, as the power bricks that are built into the plug take up a lot of room. The walls have no insulation, and while we redo the rest of the electrical, I wanted to know if it would be unheard of to have say, 10 or more outlets in one place on the wall?
Be very careful with multiple power strips. You can overload the circuits in the electrical panel or elsewhere which can result in fires.
Since you are a gadget user, I would suggest installing separate breakers designated for that room only. You can do this your self if you have the knowhow or pay to have it down, but either way, it could possibly save a much bigger problem down the road.
Be very careful with multiple power strips. You can overload the circuits in the electrical panel or elsewhere which can result in fires.
Since you are a gadget user, I would suggest installing separate breakers designated for that room only. You can do this your self if you have the knowhow or pay to have it down, but either way, it could possibly save a much bigger problem down the road.
Be very careful with multiple power strips. You can overload the circuits in the electrical panel or elsewhere which can result in fires.
Since you are a gadget user, I would suggest installing separate breakers designated for that room only. You can do this your self if you have the knowhow or pay to have it down, but either way, it could possibly save a much bigger problem down the road.
You can do that and I would suggest that you have a new dedicated circuit for that. Something else to consider is Plugmold made by the Wiremold company. It is a narrow outlet strip that can be mounted along baseboard and countertops. You can have the outlets 6" or 12" apart and they make it with isolated ground receptacles also. You can make it any length that you want. I suggest it as you might be able to incorporate it into your decor a little better instead of a 10 gang outlet box on the wall.
Not really.. That's what the circuit breakers in your panel are there to prevent.. (Unless you have replaced all your 15 amp fuses with
30's, or have a Federal Pacific panel, with the circuit non-breakers.) You can overload a circuit if it has one outlet and a bunch of power strips, or 12 outlets, and no power strips..
Obviously you don't want to plug your A/C, and your laser printer, and your space heater into that $2.99 plastic power strip that you bought at Wal-Mart, but plugging in a bunch of 50w wall-warts isn't going to hurt you. You should not be in danger of overloading until you get to a couple dozen wall warts, assuming nothing else on the 15 amp circuit.
Most power strips have built-in 15 amp breakers, and even if you daisy chain a bunch of strips, the limiting factor is going to be that first
15 amp breaker, which may be safer than depending on that 30 amp fuse that somebody installed after all the 15's kept blowing..
Personally, I use the 10 outlet strips from SL Waber, or Belkin, which have
5 duplex outlets side by side.. with a little bit of planning, you can fit 6 rather large wall warts, and 4 regular power cords on a 10 outlet strip. I currently have 2 of these mounted on the brace underneath the back of my desk, one for UPS power from the rack mounted UPS in the server closet, and one for non-UPS power. Both the UPS, and the non-UPS power are fed from a master power strip, so the total load is limited by the 15 amp breaker in the master power strip.
This is a good idea.. having dedicated circuits for your home office is always a good idea.
Yes, you can do it by 'ganging' multiple duplex outlets and end up with as long a row, or multiple rows, of outlets as you want in pretty much any configuration you want. They have multi gang boxes in which you can wire switches or outlets. You would simply jump one outlet to the next.
This type of configuration is usually seen more in an industrial setting (bank of machines against one long wall type of thing). The most common residential application of multi gang switches is usually 4 or 5 switches ganged together controlling lights in an entryway (inside/outside/stairwell up & down).
Since you say you use a lot of bricks I think a long surface mount outlet strip won't work as well for you as the bricks will make the 1, or possibly
2, outlets next to it unusable based on the configuration of the brick. (I wish there was a standard so they all faced the same way!)
As someone else said it would be wise to put this room, or even this one project, on a separate 15A branch circuit.
Just remember this will be a permanent installation, no changing your mind later to move your workspace to another part of the room, or all this will be for not.
Are you having a professional electrician do the work or do you plan on doing it yourself?
Might not be him- I've noticed more and more of that lately in the groups I frequent. Fubar'd feed for wherever my ISP gets their updates or something. I sometimes see followups with earlier time stamps than the original posts.
I don't like outlet strips. I'm sure some of it is just esthetics (they're ugly) and prejudice, but most are not made very well and are clumsy to use.
I am just working on a home office right now. I put two sets of four permanent outlets under the desk, near either end. I also put two outlets (in one duplex box) on the wall above the desk, for ease of use with temporary electrical items.
I'm not an electrician but it sounds good to me, and I see no reason not to.
If the wall will be available to you, you might also consider toggle switches for many/all of the outlets. I tried to add toggle switches for *each* of the outlets on one power strip, and though I succeeded, it wasn't so easy, and it would have probably taken less time to add them in the wall if the outlets were going to be in the wall.
I just didn't like the idea of using electricity (even though I guess it is less -- don't know how much less -- when the appliance isn't running.) and having heat come from the adaptors, and I imagined that adaptor might fail sooner than otherwise. I try to keep my gadgets
10, 20, 30, 40 years and I don't want to have to run around looking for replacement adaptors, and then soldering on the right ends, if the adapter fails before the gadget.
Ganging is a good idea. Some boxes have sides that come out, and you can take the left side out of one, and the right side out of the other, and attach the two boxes to make one box twice as wide. you can do this as many times as you want, until you get to a stud. I might put the toggle switches above the outlets.
I haven't heard anyone in this thread talk about surge protection. If you wanna run it all from the wall, and have an electrician there anyway, I'd look at putting in a whole-house surge protector. CPU, main monitor, and any high-speed modems and powered external drives, really ought to be on a UPS as well.
This is the EXACT product I used when setting-up my computer center. I works GREAT and I highly recommend it.
This was back when I ran TWO, full computer systems in the same, L-shaped area. I have a "million" outlets (32?) all plugged-into a high-dollar surge bar (for whatever THAT's worth) and have never wanted for outlet space. The myriad of "wall warts" are accommodated nicely as are all the other cords. I have outlets left over.
It's all protected by the original, 15-amp circuit breaker that protects that particular area of my finished basement. I've have NEVER had a problem since ~1993.
Someone probably said what I a about to say already.
Even in 21st century modern houshold, overloading the crcuit is not recommend. Beside, if you are a computer user, you must be aware of surge protector, etc. These days, people UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) that prevents the computer form shutting down abruptly in case of power oputage. UPS checks the load also.
Do not connect printer to UPS, only PC, sound system, monitor, modem should be connected to UPS. Belkin and PAC are populra brands. There are many different ones. You have to determine how much watage level or Amperage you want. I have Belkin 900 VA. I am not a game perosn but I don't think you would want to play game on back up power supply anyway. So get soemthign just enought to protect your PC so that it wouold initiate shutting down properly in case of electrical troubles.
After reading a few posts and not seeing about surge protector, I just posted mine bfore I saw yours.
I haven't heard anyone doing it like that. That would protect every electronic pieces in the house like microwave too from surges. About looking inot putting in a whole-house surge protector, how much approx. would it cost to get an electrician do it?
We have a professional, but I haven't spoken to him about this yet, as we are still in planing. I know I want to have several outlets, coax, phone, and Cat 6 jacks along a certain wall, so I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do it.
I've seen telecom/data combo outlets, and I was thinking of having two "quadruplex" outlets a few feet apart, obviously not switched.
I found this very excelent "power strip" of sorts. It's called the power squid
formatting link
and I think I'll order a few. Not the design so that bricks can be easily accomodated.
By the way, I have seen 5 or 6 switches "ganged" up in one long switch plate, but never multiple outlets. I will certainly request to have each bedroom independently wired.
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