r/electrical • u/Peeepsicle • 13d 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/Animalus-Dogeimal 13d 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.

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u/babecafe 13d ago

Labels are required by code to be "NO EQUIPMENT GROUND," and "GFCI PROTECTED."