Daisy chained power strips

NutterzUK · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:04

In my new house, I have room for an office. I will admit at the moment, I have had to daisy chain power strips, but I am sure I am not meant to do that.

Actually, i've done slightly worse that than, I need to look for a good recommended solution, such as one of the larger surge protectors. I have some expensive equipment I don't want to fry, and I am renting this place and don't want to burn it down, but I don't have the option of changing the mains wiring.

I currently have a double socket in the wall.
From one socket, I have a 1-4 plug, with
- Macbook pro charger
- Dell Inspiron 1545 charger
- Power to wireless printer at the other side of the room.
- Desktop fan

From the other socket I have a 1-4 plug with:
- Monitor
- Desktop PC ( 650w PSU, dual graphics and core i7, which worries me it will eat power ).
- Logitech 2.1 Z4 speakers.
- A plug to another 1-4 strip with
- Buffalo NAS drive
- Virgin media Super Hub.

This kinda worries me.. a lot. I'm a student and so will have to move house a lot, stupid as it may sound looking at that list, I like to be power conscious also. I have seen one of these things where when you turn the PC on, you can plug other things into it that turn on at the same time, I don't know if these are good.

Currently I am not sure if the ones I have even have surge protectors on, so i'm worried. I am looking for a solution which would have sockets for these ( umm, 10 ish ) things, with a surge protector, and I would like to be able to turn them off individually if possible. ( So the chargers, printer etc are only on when in use, and when i'm afk, I can turn everything but the nas and virgin media off. ).

Any recommendations?

Thanks! Any help is much appreciated!

topdog@OC · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:09

13A fuse can carry around 2400W or more, so given that's the biggest fuse your power strips will have try and stay well under that for each wall socket.

Things like your hubs and such I expect to have small load, even monitors are not that bad (aren't LCDs in the ~10W standby to ~120W full load range? CRTs are fairly juicy though), and so if you have no more than 1 PC + few miscellaneous peripheral things, or 1 printer + few miscellaneous peripheral things (laser printers were juicy too, last I recalled,) going into a wall socket, you're probably alright with that quantity of gear.

For comparison, my living room was running:

52" lcd tv
27" lcd monitor
24" lcd monitor (now replaced by another 27" lcd)
~500W PC
~300W PC (now replaced by around ~800W PC)
adsl router
nas
5.1 speakers
2.0 speakers
g27 wheel
phone charger
netbook/camera charger

Aside from the fact I don't charge all day, and 1-2 of the screens would go into standby when not in use, everything else is pretty much on around the clock. I don't believe the mains is even close to breaking a sweat on this load, maybe ~2KW with everything running? My leccy bill is peanuts.

Each wall socket has a power strip off it loaded like:
TV
PC + stuff
PC + stuff
router / nas

NutterzUK · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:20

topdog@OC said:
13A fuse can carry around 2400W or more, so given that's the biggest fuse your power strips will have try and stay well under that for each wall socket.

Things like your hubs and such I expect to have small load, even monitors are not that bad (aren't LCDs in the ~10W standby to ~120W full load range? CRTs are fairly juicy though), and so if you have no more than 1 PC + few miscellaneous peripheral things, or 1 printer + few miscellaneous peripheral things (laser printers were juicy too, last I recalled,) going into a wall socket, you're probably alright with that quantity of gear.

Thats brilliant advice, I don't know much about these so that is massively helpful!

I am sure the chargers when not in use don't use much power ( I hear they do still use power though ), the monitor is a Dell SP2309W which says it uses 65.0 Watts when operational, voltage required: AC 120/230V (50/60Hz). I would hope the NAS and Virgin superhub don't use much as they are intended to leave on.

One thing, when you say "each wall socket", with it being a double socket, does that mean total for both of them, or that individual one. Is a double socket likely to be wired, much like one of these extenders ( two from one )?

topdog@OC · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:27

I'm not an electrician, but a double wall socket is basically not really any different to individual sockets. The fuse/load that can be carried by the mains is higher than what you're plugging in, and a mains ring (which may or may not include other rooms like bedrooms / bathrooms / kitchen depending on where they are situated and the house is wired) can generally take up to 7200W. Regular 3 bedroom house for example will likely have a ring for upstairs and a ring for downstairs, each carrying 7200W.

To the best of my knowledge, regardless of how many sockets come off a ring, just don't overload its total, and less than 13A into any single wall socket.

NutterzUK · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:27

Ah, interesting. I found an answer to something else which bothered me. My OH always tells me to unplug un-used chargers at night, I'm sure it's not a bad idea to prevent any chance of fire, but the reasoning was mainly that it used power.
Reading here: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/

Has made me worry less about this now, I was starting to think I'm a horrible nasty world eating person for leaving chargers plugged in!

NutterzUK · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:31

topdog@OC said:
I'm not an electrician, but a double wall socket is basically not really any different to individual sockets. The fuse/load that can be carried by the mains is higher than what you're plugging in, and a mains ring (which may or may not include other rooms like bedrooms / bathrooms / kitchen depending on where they are situated and the house is wired) can generally take up to 7200W. Regular 3 bedroom house for example will likely have a ring for upstairs and a ring for downstairs, each carrying 7200W.

To the best of my knowledge, regardless of how many sockets come off a ring, just don't overload its total, and less than 13A into any single wall socket.

Thanks again for this advise! I will start adding some numbers to see what kind of numbers we are using here. I the rings we have in this house are actually printed on the fuse box downstairs, so I will also go and take a look to see whats on which ring.

Huge thanks for your help.
I have one more question, which may deem it totally unnecessary for me to splash out on a fancy surge protector. We have a fuse box downstairs. My xbox power cable needed replacing and has already tripped the fuse once causing downstairs power to turn off. My question is though, if we have that which can detect faults and any surges from lightening, is there a need to have a surge protector? Is that maybe protecting twice, or do these things still have a place in houses? I know the fuse box downstairs is fairly new.

topdog@OC · 10 Jul 2011 at 13:32

From people who have probably forgotten more than I know about this topic, I'm underestimating how much a single socket can take (they say upwards to 3KW is acceptable), but that a double-wall socket isn't 'rated' to carry 2x 13A worth, and it's more like 4KW max load for the combined pair:

http://www.diy-forum.net/wall-socket-electricity-outlet-load-configuration-t41419.html

Edit: Surge protection at the wall socket to your gear is a reasonable thing to do, particularly since power strips and surge protection tend to be hand in hand a lot these days. I would not put my faith into the fuse box, it's quite possible to have a surge take out a PC whilst the rest of the house (and fuse box) are seemingly unaffected aside from a momentary blackout. I don't know how effective they really are against lightning strike damage (if lightning electricity arcs can brute force their way through miles of air, even if it is somewhat charged air, I can't see a 1 inch gap protected by fuse wire doing much to stop it), but they basically last forever so buying a couple isn't a bad peace-of-mind investment.

NutterzUK · 10 Jul 2011 at 23:38

Thanks again topdog, a huge help!

jaybee · 10 Jul 2011 at 23:47

I've never ever worried about overloading sockets having personally abused daisy chaining in the past (temporarily). I once had to run my entire lounge from one socket due to ongoing DIY. It had about several computers, a couple of consoles, a big telly, 2 monitors, an entire DJ setup including decks/mixer/amps/recorders/sub/surround setup, additional hifi, lamps and other misc stuff. Never had an issue once.