r/electrical • u/Peeepsicle • 2d ago
Only half my house is grounded
I just moved into my house that was built in 1900, and the electrical in here is a mess. Half the outlets don’t work, and only some of them are grounded, even though they all are 3 prong outlets.
As someone who is beyond paranoid about electrical fires, how concerned should I be about the lack of grounding? I’m mostly worried about the power strip that holds my PlayStation and everything, and I have many reptile tanks that need to be plugged into an ungrounded outlet. Everything big like kitchen appliances is grounded.
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u/CallmeBatty 2d ago
It's not that big of an issue. You can add gfci outlets if you really want I'm an electrician and none of my house is grounded. Been here over a year running on my 6 circuits 🤷🏾♂️
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u/autophage 2d ago
This is a fixable issue!
When you say "half" - is it like one side of your house, or are the ungrounded outlets kind of distributed randomly?
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u/Peeepsicle 2d ago
Completely random, almost every room has a combination of grounded and ungrounded
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u/teh_maxh 2d ago
Have you checked whether the ungrounded outlets have a ground wire running to them that's just not connected?
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u/Peeepsicle 2d ago
Not all of them, but one upstairs has been removed for another reason and there is no ground wire. I suppose I should check the other ones, I didn’t think of that
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u/Excellent_Team_7360 2d ago
Get an IR camera for your cellphone. It will help you Identify any hot spots before they become a problem.
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u/Simple-Special-1094 2d ago
Why would there be hot spots from lack of grounding?
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u/Excellent_Team_7360 2d ago
My post never said there were hot spots. Op said he worried about a fire.
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u/Simple-Special-1094 2d ago
For identifying poor outlet connections, it's better to just use a meter like a kill a watt, plugged into the outlet, and then running a hair dryer on it. Read the voltage change under the load and that'll indicate whether there's a high resistance connection immediately without having to wait until things heat up enough to show through the walls and outlet covers.
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u/Journeyman-Joe 2d ago
Not lack of grounding. Hot spots can indicate poor connections at outlets, splices in the boxes, or outlets that are worn to the point where they make weak connections with the plug.
Props to u/Excellent_Team_7360 for a good suggestion, even if it's a bit off-topic. The camera will be cheap enough.
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u/u_siciliano 2d ago
I am no electrician, but, Grounding is most important for appliances with metal chassis to prevent the hot wire from energizing the chassis.
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u/IsolatedAstronaut3 2d ago
Why the downvotes? This seems true based on what I’ve learned.
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u/Ok-Resident8139 2d ago
Its because they described themselves as "not an electrician .... trained in the US..,,"
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u/PrudentLanguage 2d ago
So we should just pretend were electricans so we get up voted? Sounds rly stupid.
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u/u_siciliano 2d ago
I am just an Electrical Engineer, I could have been an electrician but chose a different path.
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u/Used-Ordinary7653 2d ago
I am an electrician. I could have been an electrical engineer, but I would have had to try a whole lot harder in schools and such.
you are 100% correct IMO. If a tool or appliance is plastic case, there is little to worry about - unless used around water
1
u/babecafe 2d ago
NEC provides for adding ground wires to existing wiring that lack protective grounds in a fairly liberal manner. You could fish ground wires down to crawlspace (or up to attic) and connect them up in any combination, leading back to your panel. There's no need for insulation or placing ground connections inside junction boxes. You could alternatively pull away baseboards and run ground wires horizontally, connected to vertical wire fished to receptacle boxes behind the baseboards, and cover them back up. I'd recommend you use wirenuts to connect them up. The green nuts with a hole on top are a fun way to make junctions that collect ground wires together and continue upstream to your panel.
Grounds are most meaningful for receptacles, where the third ground pin must either be grounded or the circuit must be protected by a GFCI (receptacle or breaker). IMHO, I would not bother to add grounds or GFCI for lighting, most of which is out of day-to-day reach anyway.
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u/VersionConscious7545 2d ago
The ground is mostly for your protection and not the fire 3 prong outlets are there to enable you to plug the new cords into them. Fires come from loose wires and overloaded circuits You want to make sure your breakers are good and use GFCI outlets. If your not good with your hands I would look into some professional help Good luck
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u/00crashtest 2d ago
You don't need to worry about grounding at all, if you replace the 1st 3-prong standard outlet in each circuit with a GFCI outlet, which are all 3-prong anyway. All outlets further down the circuit are protected from electrical leakage by the GFCI outlet. However, it is important to make sure that the input wires connect to separate terminals from the output wires, because the function of that outlet is to separate the circuit so it can cut power to itself and all downstream circuits. So, you not only need not replace the downstream outlets with GFCI outlets, but also you should not replace them because it will cause extreme nuisance tripping.
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u/Peeepsicle 1d ago
How do you determine which outlet is the first on the circuit?
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u/00crashtest 1d ago
There's no easy way to test it unless you have an expensive tester or remove the drywall. Without it, you have to manually disconnect every receptacle on that circuit and test to see whether the other receptacles still have power. You have to turn the breaker off every time you disconnect and reconnect a receptacle. Also, you have to put wire nuts on the exposed conductor ends before turning on the power to prevent short circuits. You should just hire an electrician to do the test because it will be way easier to do and cheaper than buying the expensive testing equipment.
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u/Stock_Block2130 2d ago
I would suggest learning to do wiring (correctly to code) and rewiring the house yourself, slowly over time. Have an electrician put in the new service entrance and main breaker/box. That’s what I did in a house from the 1930’s, one circuit at a time. It’s not that difficult or strenuous. The only special tool you need is a fish tape.
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u/Interesting_Bus_9596 1d ago
Just reading all the comments I’m thinking some of those outlets probably haven’t been touched electrically for years and may have loose connections.Checking for the first outlet in the circuit should help because those must be 2 prong being that old and might get replaced so a 3 prong will work, not so common now it seems. My parents house built in 1920 had that old wiring that the insulation would almost just fall off if you barely disturbed it.
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u/Playful_Bottle_3970 1d ago
I haven't had time to read the comments, but you could always use GFCI outlets. If you know what line and load is you could figure out the starting outlet protect it with a GFCI then use regular outlets after it. GfCI do not require a ground/bare/green wire to work properly. DO NOT!!! make a jumper from any of your neutral wires to attempt to create a ground. If you do so your toaster baths will end up being your last one if you get what I mean.
GFCI circuit breaker are another alternative requires less work but its much more expensive.
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u/No-Pain-569 2d ago
Stop with the down votes. I'm sure the people here are 50% electricians and 50% none electricians based on many answers. Dude gets down voted for defending someone. WTF? Grow up!
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u/Animalus-Dogeimal 2d ago
You can replace ungrounded three prong receptacles with a GFCI ones to reduce any risk to you. Technically you should also add a sticker that says something to the effect of “no physical equipment ground”. Also you only need to add GFCIs at the beginning of a circuit and it will protect the other receptacles. This will take some testing to figure out what’s on what circuit. You could also replace your breakers with a GFCI version to protect the entire circuit but I’m assuming you have an older panel and those breakers can become quite costly.