Brickwall

[boutrosa]

Does anyone use a Brickwall line conditioner? Just wondering if its worth ordering. I curently have one of those $200 monster Ht power strips Stage 2. Is it a good enough power conditioner, or shoud I upgrade to something else?

 

[attyonline]

Your money can be used more wisely elsewhere IMO.

 

[Kaliar]

Does anyone use a Brickwall line conditioner? Just wondering if its worth ordering. I curently have one of those $200 monster Ht power strips Stage 2. Is it a good enough power conditioner, or shoud I upgrade to something else?

Yes I do ! In fact I use two ZeroSurge units to protect my main system; different name, same product !

By the way, Brickwall is more a surge protector than a line conditioner. If your electricity is very stable, no need for one. However, for surge protection, the Brickwall units are very good.

I live in Canada and have discussed the usefulness of surge protection with an engineer that works for Hydro-Québec. He told me that despite all their safety procedures, power fluctuates. Each year, incidents happen in which power gets much over the typical values, fortunately most of the time for very short periods. Because of that fact, the engineer insisted on the importance of good surge protection !!

A typical power bar will not protect your expensive hi-fi system, a Brickwall will !!

Take care !

 

[boutrosa]

Hi and thanks for your replys. where I live, we have mojor electrical problems to the point that I have even been thinking of putting a ups also. If I daisy chain severaly of these surge protectors, what are the pros and cones?

 

[Cherian]

Daisy chaining surge suppressors will not get you any additional protection. Most surge suppressors today use Metal Oxide Veristors (MOV) to clamp surge voltages. These do a good job but have its weakness. One being that it will not clamp the voltage till it gets to its clamping threshold. Once the spike hits the clamping threshold the MOV will shunt the surge to ground. So daisy chaining surge suppressors will not gain you anything.

See the links below

http://www.powervar.com/Eng/pdf/wp203.pdf

http://www.powervar.com/Eng/pdf/emc2.pdf

 

[DTB300]

Cherian....I thought I remember the Brickwall and ZeroSurge protectors to be non-MOV based which is what makes them a good piece of equipment for surge protection.

I have heard the same thing you have talked about with MOV's - and if not mistaken (please pass on your knowledge if you would) that MOV's over time, as they take some surges, will wear out and be even less protective.

Dan

 

[Cherian]

I was just on the Brickwall website reading up on there technology. It’s an OK noise and frequency dependent surge suppressor. I don’t like the fact that it has no MOVs. This is why. The Brickwall in designed as an LCR filter. This means that its frequency dependent. If the surge comes in at 10 kHz to 5 MHz you have OK protection. But if the surge is in the form of a unipolar wave (no frequency) it will ride through the Brickwall device like it was not there. If they added an MOV to this circuit it would be a better design.

I still like doing this with a low impedance isolation transformer rather than an inductor. The inductor costs less but you can not re tie neutral to ground. With an isolation transformer you can re tie neutral to ground.

Yes, you are right MOV will degrade over time. It’s a good idea to check them for damage every 6 months or so.

http://brickwall.com/conditn.htm

 

[boutrosa]

Hi and thanks for the advice. I have major surge problems and living on top of a mountain, my home is a magnet for lighting because of the sat and internet dishes on my roof.

Last week we did get hit by lightning, thanks for excelent ground work that I only lost 2 sat receivers. I guess its because the gr6 cables were not well grounded. Thats fixed now.

Anyways, I don't have to tell you how Important it is to me to find a solution.

I am really interested in the isolation transformer. I have a full sign wave inverter and generator for uninterupted power but I am sure there are spited during the switchover. Thats why I wanted to put a brickwall before my monsterpower that way I would be protected by both MOV and lcr filter.

I am open to any sudgestions that any of you may have.

Thanks

 

[Cherian]

I would look at a true isolation transformer based Power conditioner by OneAC, Teal, or Powervar. If you are going to use it on your audio equipment over size the power conditioner so that it can deliver the peak currents your system will need. I would go with a power conditioner rated 10 to 12 amps. These can be found on E-bay for very few $$$.

 

[bnam]

What about something like this:

http://way-india.com/blitzkrieg_series.html

or APC UPS RS1000

I have the APC as the power here tends to go out at least once a day and it can be a couple of minutes before the back up generators kick in. I was looking for a voltage stabilizer/surge protector and then decided to get this even though I don't really need the UPS part of it -- that's just a plus that I can continue listening to music.

I don't know if these use MOVs or not.

B

 

[Cherian]

True online double conversion UPSs are great. They take the incoming sine wave and rectify it to DC and then use an inverter to make a new clean sine wave. If you are running some super critical load and THD and up time is important to you I think an on-line ups is a good idea. If you just want good clean power I would go with a low impedance isolation transformer based Power conditioner. If you want the best of both worlds and can afford it the go to the link below. This on-line ups has an isolation transformer on the output.

http://www.toshiba.com/ind/product_display.jsp?id1=14&id2=23

Again this is very costly and I don’t think the Bang for the buck is there. But it is one solid UPS that also offers Power conditioning in the form of an isolation transformer.