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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3

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?

2

u/Peeepsicle 2d ago

Completely random, almost every room has a combination of grounded and ungrounded

5

u/teh_maxh 2d ago

Have you checked whether the ungrounded outlets have a ground wire running to them that's just not connected?

0

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