Outlet to breaker ratio?

parabolic

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Well, im starting to get things rolling on my arcade. Im a long way off, but Id like to know how many machines to run off of 1 20a breaker? I have a nice empty 200a service panel dedicated just for my basement, so 6 20a circuits shouldnt be an issue. Id also like to run them switched off of some cool looking switches (I saw someone on here had some with a high voltage sign?).
I know Takeman had over 45 machines running at his last party, and he has I think - 4 switches for the outlets.
Thanks!
 
there is a difference between what you can run and what you should run. I just had a journeyman electrician put in 2 more 20 amp circuits for a total of 3 20amp circuits and one 15 amp circuit to the game room now. He suggested no more than 4 machines on one outlet and keeping it at a total of 6 machines on a 20 amp circuit. You could run more, but you could also over heat the wiring and cause problems. I am sure people here will tell you that you can run a lot more than that You can tow a trailer full of games with a 4 banger too, but a V6 or v8 will do it better , longer and safer...
 
there is a difference between what you can run and what you should run. I just had a journeyman electrician put in 2 more 20 amp circuits for a total of 3 20amp circuits and one 15 amp circuit to the game room now. He suggested no more than 4 machines on one outlet and keeping it at a total of 6 machines on a 20 amp circuit. You could run more, but you could also over heat the wiring and cause problems. I am sure people here will tell you that you can run a lot more than that You can tow a trailer full of games with a 4 banger too, but a V6 or v8 will do it better , longer and safer...

Wow -- 6 machines on a 20 amp circuit is pretty conservative but I can see why he wants to err on the side of caution.

I had 1 20 amp dedicated circuit run for my mini-gameroom. Right now I have 4 games hooked to it and measured it last night as drawing about 7.5 amps (peak at 8) and figured that one more game would push me to about 9.5 amps. If I were to go one beyond that would be at about 11.5 amps on a 20 amp circuit. I only have one (dual plug) outlet on the circuit so I can't stop at 4.

I have a nice mix -- B&W vector, color vector, 19" raster, 27" raster and the color vector is the big energy hog.
 
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Well, im starting to get things rolling on my arcade. Im a long way off, but Id like to know how many machines to run off of 1 20a breaker? I have a nice empty 200a service panel dedicated just for my basement, so 6 20a circuits shouldnt be an issue. Id also like to run them switched off of some cool looking switches (I saw someone on here had some with a high voltage sign?).
I know Takeman had over 45 machines running at his last party, and he has I think - 4 switches for the outlets.
Thanks!

Basically, don't exceed (or even come close) to the circuit's rating. If you exceed the load, then you'll trip the breaker. If you run AT the load, then you'll be pushing everything to it's limits.

I just found an online reference that says you should only load a circuit to 80% of it's capacity. For a 15 amp circuit, that's about 12 amps, for a 20 amp circuit, that's about 16 amps.

http://electrical.about.com/od/panelsdistribution/f/calculateload.htm

The thing isn't the number of machines, it's how much to they draw in total. To figure that, invest in a kill-a-watt (http://www.amazon.com/P3-Internatio...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1252339843&sr=8-1) and measure a couple of machines. Then you can guess at the load for machines you don't have yet.

Other things: Make sure you get a real electrician, OR make sure you know what you are doing for adding circuits. It's not at all hard, but you don't want to use the wrong size wire, or the circuit won't be safe. Since it's new circuits, you don't have to worry about old wiring issues. When in doubt use heavier wire.

Put in sufficient outlets! Power strips and extension cords are far more likely to cause a problem than properly wired outlets. It's no harder for an electrician to put 4 outlets in a location than 2, so go for it. It also looks a heck of a lot nicer that way.

Don't run extension cords behind drywall or panelling. That's what killed the neighbor kid when I was young (previous owners of that house were apparently cheap, stupid, a-holes).

If you do use extension cords/power strips, make sure they are appropriately rated. Again, heavier wire is better.

EDIT:Oh yea, and remember, you can have more outlets per circuit than you can use at one time. Obviously they cost money, but more outlets might give you more flexibility in setting up the game room.
 
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Mh,

That's pretty much how I did my calculations last night -- with a kill-a-watt.

> If you exceed the load, then you'll trip the breaker. If you run AT the load, then you'll be pushing everything to it's limits.

In my case I have a surge protector hooked up before the games that has a feature that I love and want -- it goes off in a brown-out/power failure and won't come back on until manually reset. All too often here I'll see a brown out and the power will bounce off and on several times very rapidly and I don't want my games subjected to that!

My only issue is that the surge protector is limited to 10 amps max (1250 watts) and I will likely be running around 9-9.5 amps (1000 watts) on this circuit.

Sounds like I'll need to ditch this surge protector? Hate to give it up...
 
The thing isn't the number of machines, it's how much to they draw in total.

Almost, but that's not the whole story. The inrush current when a game is first turned on will be a big spike. When you have multiple games on a circuit don't turn them all on at once. It's a HUGE current draw for the first 1/10 of a second or so.

Put in sufficient outlets! Power strips and extension cords are far more likely to cause a problem than properly wired outlets. It's no harder for an electrician to put 4 outlets in a location than 2, so go for it. It also looks a heck of a lot nicer that way.

Couldn't agree more. If you are going to use power strips at least spend the money and get the professional grade 19" ones that mount in a rack cabinet. They are designed for 7 x 24 use and constant high current draw.

The last thing anyone needs is a cheap surge protector burning up their house.

Don't run extension cords behind drywall or panelling. That's what killed the neighbor kid when I was young (previous owners of that house were apparently cheap, stupid, a-holes).

If you do use extension cords/power strips, make sure they are appropriately rated. Again, heavier wire is better.

Extension cords are a good way to burn your house down. Fire codes prohibit businesses from using any cord like that without a circuit breaker in it. It's a safety thing. Why wouldn't you do the same for your house?

Don't be stupid. Don't use too small of a gauge wire for your electrical runs.

Don't upsize breakers without checking to make sure the wire will handle the current draw.

Don't use cheap surge strips.

DO test ALL of your outlets with 3 way outlet testers. They are cheap - $7 or less - and will tell you if your outlet is wired right.

If your outlet is miswired it could be a shock hazard. It can also cause fuses to pop... Plus, if you spend the money on a 3 way surge suppressor (hot-neutral, hot-ground, and neutral-ground) power strip and you have an outlet that doesn't have the ground connected then you just lost 2/3rds of your protection! TEST THOSE OUTLETS!
 
I know Takeman had over 45 machines running at his last party, and he has I think - 4 switches for the outlets.
Thanks!


Not quite, I have 8 circuits for the games (including the black lights & neon) and used larger than normal guage wire.
 
This is a great topic... definitely worth discussion. I've been thinking about this quite a bit in regards to my house and decided to get one of the kill-a-watt power strips, so I could measure more than one game running at once.

I fired up my DK and noticed that it ran at 1.1 amps and about 110 watts while playing a game. DKJr. ran the same. I fired up Burgertime and Mr. Do and they ran around 1.5A, so I figured that I could run 4-6 simultaneously on a 15A circuit.

I definitely follow the advice of turning them on in succession instead of simultaneously... the flash/FLA of one of the games on initial fire-up is easily 2-4 amps.

Good food for thought though... I think I'm going to need to talk to an electrician to see about installing some new breakers and running more wire.
 
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It is a very good topic...

I've never tested my outlets that my arcade games are hooked to.

I think that my UPSes test for this because there's a light that comes on if there's a wiring problem.

I guess I'll just move my ups in there and have at it...

BTW, remember the folks that were selling off the games for the arcade museum here in Houston? One of the folks involved told me that they had something like 7-8 games plugged in at the same time (on a non-dedicated circuit presumably) and they had an electrical fire in their wall and they pointed out how some of the plugs on the games had melted from it...
 
Mh,

That's pretty much how I did my calculations last night -- with a kill-a-watt.

> If you exceed the load, then you'll trip the breaker. If you run AT the load, then you'll be pushing everything to it's limits.

In my case I have a surge protector hooked up before the games that has a feature that I love and want -- it goes off in a brown-out/power failure and won't come back on until manually reset. All too often here I'll see a brown out and the power will bounce off and on several times very rapidly and I don't want my games subjected to that!

My only issue is that the surge protector is limited to 10 amps max (1250 watts) and I will likely be running around 9-9.5 amps (1000 watts) on this circuit.

Sounds like I'll need to ditch this surge protector? Hate to give it up...

You could get a second one and split the load, but be sure to do something - that's not a stable situation. You might want to look into whether there's a way to get brownout protection at the breaker. I've never heard of such a thing, but what do I know?
 
This is a very old surge protector -- > 20 years. Its voltage spike protection is probably long gone but I've been keeping it around because of the brown-out shutoff feature that no one else seems to have.

8-10 years ago when I was still using a VCR to do my scheduled recordings of TV events we got a nice series of rapid brownouts and my VCR was so freaked out by them that it actually recorded several programs in a format that it could not play back later. It wasn't damaged by the brownouts but it scared me enough to pull out and start using this old surge protector again along with adding a UPS to protect most of my video equipment.

This is what I'm trying to protect my video games from.

Realistically I'm going to have to stop using this surge protector because I don't feel comfortable pushing it right to its very limit. (Yes, it does have a 10 amp fuse or breaker in it).
 
Hell, just go to First Saturday or some other type of flea market/hamfest and pick up some cheap used UPS systems.

I picked up a 700 watt rack mount UPS for $5. $30 in batteries and it was up & running. It's on it's 3rd set of batteries at 4 years old which should last me until 2011.

:D
 
Maybe so.

APC says their 2200VA UPS can only hold a 1000 watt load for 24 seconds.

I'm guessing you'd get maybe 10 seconds of power if you're lucky out of a fresh 1500VA unit.

I'm also pretty leery now of:

a) Cheap UPSes. I had two CyberPower UPSes and they sucked big-time. APC or Belkin is the only brand I'd buy now

b) Running things other than computers from UPSes. I damaged my home theater audio receiver when I plugged it into a UPS so I don't do that anymore. I'm guessing it didn't like the square wave equivalent power that the UPS was putting out on battery?

I'm actually fine with havnig everything turn off when the power browns out... but I'm not gonna push that surge protector to its rated limit. :)
 
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