I am mounting an LCD on the wall and want to run all the wiring to an outlet behind the screen. Every TV presently in my house has hum bars and I have figured out that every time the water heater exhaust fan kicks in we see hum bars. I am hoping a power conditioner will help but I dont want to install it behind the flat panel or run a cord to a rack. Is there a power conditioner that I can install on the branch circuit in the basement and run the romex up to the wall outlet?

I found a solution that is in my price range ($200) that will suit my needs but I am wondering if it will help:

[Link: monstercable.com]

Has anyone had any luck eliminating hum bars with this solution?

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

RCfreund

I would use an APC C2, Furman AC215, or preferably SurgeX SA82 for surge protection behind the plasma.

Then I would - now pay attention as this is the most important part - fix the root cause of the hum bars.

In short, call a pro to diagnose and fix the electrical issues.

You hit that nail right on the head.

Or you could first try a few cheater plugs on the TV's. They're kind of pricy. Run you about $0.75 a piece, but a lot of times they fix the hum bars

Hum bars very rarely are cured by power conditioning. The problem is almost always electrical current on the ground wire of a signal lead. Yes, it should not be there, and it only happens when that fan comes on, but the fan and the electrical are not the problem unless the fan's power is actually going to ground instead of to neutral.

First, are you the end user, or an installer? Your mention of your budget makes me think you're the end user.

Whatever you do here can affect your homeowner's insurance and void it in case of a fire, so proceed with caution. For instance,

This CAN be ONE STEP in the process of determining where the hum is coming from. But it is illegal on a permanent basis because it is dangerous. The power plug has that third prong (if indeed it does; you didn't say) for an electrical ground for it to be safe. If hum bars appear, getting rid of them does not mean getting rid of electrical safety!

If you're competent to do so, open the wiring connection for the fan and be sure it is wired correctly.

Download the hum troubleshooting paper from the Jensen transformer site. It covers ALL bases and will tell you what to do. Their products can be pricey, so if they suggest something out of your range, come back here and ask if we know of alternatives.

If you want to try out a power conditioner, buy it, plug it in with the wiring going exactly where it would go when permanently installed, and see if it works. Do all this before figuring out how to mount it. What if you take a bunch of time to figure that all out but it doesn't solve the problem?

And, hey, just for the hell of it, disconnect your cable or satellite cabling from that system and see if the hum goes away. If it does, come back here and tell us about it. You'll need to give us more detail than you did, however. See below.

That is a band aid only. If this isolates the issue then you need to have it fixed professionally.

Or you can check to see if you insurance covers one circumventing a products safety feature...