Hey all,
Trying to setup my theater in a new room here. I'm calculating the total power requirements for all my components. I am not sure if I am drawing too many amps here and I want to be safe. Will the breaker switch trigger if I go over before any damage can be done? I currently have the following:

Rotel 1075
Integra 9.8
PS3
SVS PB Ultra 13

These are all plugged into the same electrical outlet which is on a 15amp circuit. Any help would be great.

That should all fit on a 15 amp circuit with no problems.

Add up all the watts and post. If it was me I would put both the sub and amp on a dedicated 20amp curcuit and leave the rest on the 15amp.

Scott

You do not want more than 80% load at any one time on a circuit. So if you are above 1440 watts you should look at rewiring the circuit with 12/2 and put in a 20amp breaker.

Take volts x amps = watts

120 x 15 = 1800 watts

80 percent of 1800 watts is 1440 watts.

Same thing for 20amps.

120v x 20 = 2400 watts

80 percent of 2400 watts is 1920 watts.

I hope that helps.

You should be Ok and it won't do any damage, it will just trip the breaker. If it's 12/3 wire, it's an easy fix to change the breaker and outlets over to a 20 amps.

Thanks for all your help,

If I do a rough calculation, already I'm over the recommended 1440 on a 15amp circuit, since the sub is rated 750Watts and the amp is 800Watts. Not sure about the PS3 but I believe it would go over 200Watts easily. Is this really still safe?

Absolutely. I ran a 5 channel amp (200w/channel, all independent channels with their own power supplies), 2 channel sub amp (supposedly 1000W/channel), a two channel amp (Jeff Rowland #10), a preamp, a 57 inch RPTV, a Replay, lights behind the TV, a Proceed DVD transport, a Squeezebox, a DAC, and I forget what else on one single 20 amp circuit. If you were to add up the maximum wattage, I'm well beyond what should fit on a 20 amp circuit. I could run this at volumes where you had to leave the room, with no problems.

The thing is that it takes small amounts of wattage to run speakers to incredibly high volumes. The times when the amps draw the most current typically is when they turn on.

Once again, the 80% rule is for continuous loads ( continuous is for 3 hours or more). Audio power amplifiers (or receivers) do not operate at full power continuously, I hope!

And realistically, you are not pushing the 750w on that sub all the time because I imagine it would sound horrible if it was cranked all the way up with the gain and the volume up.

Continuous is also a good thing to keep in mind. I always over rate my circuits instead of under rate, but thats just me. Why go 15 amp in a new install when 20 amp is just as easy.