I’m going to finish up my last post, talking about power (eletrical, not authority!) issues to consider when planning your startup church. We’ve already looked at the two most important issues: distribution and grounding. Let’s just look at three more elements.

Failsafes
No matter how great your system, and how well you’ve planned it out, things can, and will, go wrong. So we can plan for things to fail gracefully.
#1: Inline Breakers. At some point you will overload a circuit, and trip a breaker. But you have the choice of WHOSE breaker you’re going to trip. It’s far better to buy inline 15amp breakers (~$30), and put one on each of your circuits, than to go hunting around for the facility’s fuse box when you trip a breaker during worship.
#2: UPS. When you DO trip a breaker, or experience a brown out or power outage, you can save thousand of dollars worth of equipment by simply having some battery backups on the important equipment. They also normally come with tens of thousands of dollars worth insurance on your equipment if it does get damaged. You also save yourself the reboot time on computers that lose power. Just make sure the UPS is rated with sufficient wattage for your equipment.
#3: Backup power cords and strips. One of the downsides to portable church is the wear and tear on equipment. A volunteer will help tear down, and might break a power strip, or put a dedicated power cord in the wrong box. It’s good to have a selection of 25′, 50′, and 100′ 10 gauge extension cords on hand. Also some decent power strips with surge protection, and some computer power cords. You don’t want to be making a WalMart run 15 minutes before service starts.

Equipment
When purchasing equipment, keep power consumption in mind. LED lighting doesn’t throw as well as old school lighting, but consumes a fraction of the power, and never gets hot to the touch. Dynamic, self-powered speakers help cut down on RF interferance, but have the added bonus of distributing the power load to each speaker, instead of having a rack of amps pulling a lot in one spot.
When purchasing power cords, you can buy regular extension cords from home depot, but make sure they are a thick enough guage that they won’t overheat under the load.
A far better solution is to purchase SO cord in bulk, and custom make your own cables. SO cord is heavy duty, proffesional grade electrical cord, available at Home Depot or a local electrician. It’s black, which makes it much easier to conceal than the bright yellow or red commercial extension cords. It’s rubber coated which helps stop it from getting kinked, and is easier to coil. And it’s designed for high power throughput.

Designing the system
First things first, map it out. Sketch out a layout of the facility, note where the stage, lights, soundboard, etc. will be, and figure out where you’re going to run power from, and how you’re going to route it. Remember to keep lighting power away from sound power.
Measure twice, cut once. If you’re going to make custom SO cords, give yourself plenty of slack when you cut and terminate. You’ll thank yourself later.
Protect your equipment. Whether you make or buy power cords, label everything. Use colored electrical tape to color code different power circuits. Consider using twist-lock plugs instead of the regular kind. Twist-locks will help prevent someone accidentally disconnecting a power cord. They will also prevent volunteers trying to unplug them from 6 feet away by yanking on the cord. It also stops them from being “borrowed” to use somewhere else, and never finding their way home again.
Storage. Portable churches; put the long cable runs on hose reels. Make sure volunteers tearing down know how to coil properly, and that the cords are not getting wrapped around someone’s elbow (more on that in a future post!).
Try asking the facility if you can have a dedicated breaker box professionally installed (on your dime). It really doesn’t take much cost or work, but that way you can be sure to have all the power you need without ever tripping the facility’s breakers.
Finally, find volunteers to help with this. Is there anyone with CAD skills who could help map out the facilities? Does someone have any experience as an electrician who could spend an evening wiring plugs and outlets? Can your local ACE hardware donate the SO cord for a tax write-off?

Phew! That’s a lot of information to process. Just remember to plan ahead. You may not be at a place right now that you need a big lighting rig, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be in a year or two.

Probably one of the easiest things to overlook when planning your startup church is figuring out how much power you’re going to need, and where you’re going to get it from. Kids Church, mailouts, set up and tear down crews, signage, etc. are all top priority. At home, when you need to plug something in, you just plug it in. At worst, you throw a power strip in the mix.
When you’re considering power requirements for a startup church, especially in a portable location, it’s a whole different ballgame. So here’s some different points to consider:

1) Distribution
Running a church probably requires a significantly higher power consumption than your facility is prepared for. Most of the outlets on the wall in a movie theater are designed to run a vacuum cleaner, not a lighting system. A classroom distributes power to run lots of low-draw computers, not a powered speaker array. So your number one priority is to distribute the load, and not rely on the facility’s distribution.
Break down your power needs into the basic categories, eg.
i. Lights,
ii. Speakers/amps,
iii. Stage,
iv. Soundbooth,
v. Projectors,
vi. Nursery,
vii. Kid’s church sound,
viii. Kid’s church lights, etc.
Then figure out (google “Ohm’s law”) how much power each one of these categories will draw, then PUT EACH ONE ON A SEPARATE BREAKER CIRCUIT. Plan to have each of the categories draw less than 15amps. If it looks like your lights will need 20amps, split them on to two separate circuits.
Next, find where you can run the power from. In a movie theater your best bet is to drop power from the projection room. In a school or storefront, you may need to find a maintenance closet/room with the breaker box. Figure what your location does that draws a lot of power (giant movie projectors) and start from there.

2) Grounding
The next issue to consider is grounding. This is most noticable when you get the incessant buzzing sound in the speakers, and can’t figure out what’s causing it. This is called a “60 cycle hum” and is caused because US power is ~110 volts AC, and cycles at 60hz, and somewhere that is bleeding in to the sound signal. The number one way to lose that hum is by making sure that ALL the band and sound equipment are on the same circuit, thus having a common ground.
Another major factor in eliminating the hum is making sure the lighting power is on a totally different circuit to the sound power. Make sure the power cords don’t run along side each other, or near the sound snake.
One more grounding issue. It’s worth spending the $3 at Home Depot to get a circuit tester that will tell you if the outlets you’re plugging in to are polarized correctly, and grounded properly. Bad ground could be potentially very dangerous (electrified lighting towers, etc), and bad polarization can permanently damage equipment.

In my next post I’ll cover 2 or 3 more issues to consider when setting up power. Stay tuned.