Electrical question

[Holly_Hobby]

Our house was built in 1959 and still has fuses vs. circuit breakers, 100 amp service. My husband insists that none of the outlets in our house are grounded except for the outlet near the sink in the kitchen because he grounded it himself when he replaced it by attaching a wire to the plumbing. Actually, we had to replace all of the outlets in the house because there were only 2 holes instead of 3 and none of the newer plugs would fit. So he says they're not grounded because old plugs only required 2 holes and there was no ground wire to attach. That can't be right, can it?

Will be buying a tester next week to see if he's right. In the meantime, anyone know about older wiring and grounding?

[ret5hd]

1. He;s right.

[Holly_Hobby]

2. Thank you...this is astounding to me

How did we ever get an FHA loan if nothing is grounded???

[PoliticAverse]

3. The prime question is what is the wiring from the breaker box to the outlets?

Is it plastic cable (sometimes called Romex) that has 3 wires in it (white, black and bare copper)
or is it a flexible metal covered cable (called BX cable) with 2 wires inside (white and black)
or something else?

[Holly_Hobby]

4. The wiring is original,

very very stiff with 2 wires, white and black. He wired the light fixture boxes he installed in the ceilings of the bedrooms with Romex. There were no overhead lights, and he jumped the wired off the switch that controlled the outlet for a lamp. It's not grounded, though.

Husband says not to worry because we have a steel roof and lightning will scatter, and we have surge protectors on everything.

I obviously don't believe him

[BillZBubb]

5. Your husband is correct

Older two wire systems didn't have the third wire needed for true grounding. The two wires you have are the black "hot" and white "neutral" wires. Neither is true ground.

[Callmecrazy]

18. Wrong, sorry...

The neutral is a true dedicated ground back to the service. Neutral and ground are basically the same except that a green wire is used more as an equipment bond to make the breaker or fuse react faster.

[BillZBubb]

22. Nope, you are wrong.

Due to the resistance from the white lead back to the service, it has a voltage OFFSET from true ground that varies with the load on that circuit. Yes, it is grounded at the service, but it's voltage level is load dependent at the point of use. It does not represent true ground--unless their is little to no load on the circuit. Look up Ground Potential Differences if you don't know about this problem.

The third wire doesn't carry any current load back to the service UNLESS there is a problem. So, there is no voltage offset and it can be considered true ground.

[Callmecrazy]

23. Yes, you're technically correct.

[JoeyT]

6. He's right.

The two holes are hot (energized wire) and a neutral (return) wire. The ground is that third (round) hole on the plugs.

Grounding isn't entirely about lightning, by the way. It's about (Among other things) the hot leg breaking or otherwise screwing up and grounding out to the case and you becoming the conductor. I've done the 60 cycle shuffle before, and it wasn't fun. If you've got a ground and that happens, the load should blow the fuse or trip the breaker/GFCI in a newer house.

[Holly_Hobby]

7. Yikes...I suppose the only fix is

to rewire it up to code. We've been here 22 years and I just found out yesterday that we're not grounded. My husband even moved the 220 outlet for a dryer...no wonder he didn't want to hire an electrician to do it, probably would have refused. Thanks for the reply.

[jeff47]

9. You've got a few options.

Option 1: Do nothing. There's not a whole lot of devices you regularly use that have a ground - that's why they only have two prongs on their plug.

Truly dangerous-for-people grounding situations should be covered by a GFCI outlet, and that doesn't actually need a ground to do it's job. GFCIs work by monitoring the current going out the hot, and back in the neutral. If there's more than a trivial difference, the GFCI breaks the circuit. The outlet doesn't use the ground, other than connecting it to a ground wire.

However, doing nothing does mean anything plugged into a surge protector isn't protected. Surge protectors route the surge to the ground. So if the ground isn't wired up, the surge protector can't do it's job.

Option 2: Truly rewire the house.

This is your most thorough, and most expensive option. Run new wire to everything and get a real ground. But it will cost a lot, and require repainting most of the inside of your house - the electricians will have to punch holes in the walls to run the wires.

The pluses are you know the wiring is new and modern, and you can add enough outlets to comply with modern code (at least 1 plug per wall, no spacing between outlets larger than 12 feet. 3 feet in a kitchen). If you're using a lot of extension cords, this could be handy. You should also use this opportunity to upgrade to a 200-amp panel, and circuit breakers.

Option 3: Do it piecemeal.

You can ground an individual outlet to the plumbing, and can do that one-at-time. There's some technical reasons where this is less ideal than the 'rewire' scenario above, but it's a lot cheaper. (Google "Ground loop" if you want to read about it. It's not likely to be a problem, but it is possible.) This lets you handle the surge protector situation mentioned above.

[Holly_Hobby]

10. Thank you so much for taking the time n/t

[Warpy]

8. He's right

and at some point you're going to want to upgrade to a breaker box. Breakers trip a lot faster than fuses melt and that reduces the chance of an electrical fire dramatically.

[Holly_Hobby]

11. Thank you - you won't believe where the fuse box is -

it's in my closet - which is full of clothing. That needs to be moved as well.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

12. Are your wires in conduit, flexible metallic cable or non-metallic cable (romex)?

I didn't see the question answered up-thread.

If your wires are in conduit or metallic cable, you can ground the conduit/flexible cable - that, in turn would ground the junction boxes (they would have to be metallic as well) and any new receptacle plugs installed in metal boxes.

If you are all romex then you are out of luck (unless you have conduit and can pull new wire).

I know a lot of the older homes were done in either conduit or flexible metallic cable.

Here in Chicago and Cook County, even residential electrical is required to be piped in conduit. We don't have to run a third wire because the conduit is grounded at the service entrance (to a rod in the ground and the plumbing).

When the receptacle/plug is fastened to the junction box we are automatically grounded upon contact with the box. Therefore the green ground screw and/or any ground wire on a switch or dimmer is not required

[Holly_Hobby]

13. The current wiring is 2 wires,

encased in a white covering, husband says he doesn't know what it is, not plastic, maybe cloth. No conduit. The wires are really stiff and difficult to bend. Junction boxes are metal.

Thanks again.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

14. Just to be clear. Are you talking about the coating on the wires themselves or how the ....

Last edited Sun Mar 9, 2014, 11:41 PM - Edit history (1)

... wires are "bundled" for travel in the walls?

Sounds like you have cloth encased wire. But what joins the electrical boxes... or how do the two wires travel between boxes?


See this link for better explanation:

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/article/0,,562098-12,00.html

[Callmecrazy]

17. This is the most important answer...

If you have metal boxes and pipe for the wiring, you have a ground. Just attach a green wire to the metal box (by screw or ground clip) and it will act like the green wire in a cable assembly.

I'm a 20 year electrician and Hassin Bin Sober is on the right track.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

19. do you think s house built in 1959

has wiring run through pipe ? I know codes vary somewhat from state to state but ah ?

Commercial yes, but residential (?)

Metal box's yes but pipe ,most likely not.

As you know at about the time the copper ground was added, electricians still stocking the old wiring added a copper ground separate run along side the wiring. On occasion I have run into that Sometimes the copper ground ran behind the junction box. some point in the 60's is when the copper ground wire was added in code and manufacturing. however there is a bit of space between the code change and manufacturing of the new wire, or what is used today example 12'2 with ground. Code allowed electricians to add the copper ground running along side the house wiring. Back than the grounding three prong plugs didn't exist yet in market.

Think about it, knot and tube to wire through pipe ? Commercial buildings require what yer talking about,residential is a different set of rules. Correct me if I'm wrong and tell what state you work out of if you do correct me.It's a 50's house with 50's wiring, the type of wire that replaced the old knot and tube. It has fabric coating insulation over the 2 wires, ther's paper in there too !

[Hassin Bin Sober]

20. My parent's house was a 50s house with cloth wire in thin wall pipe. Cook county

My 105 year old chicago condo has old pipe and really flat ceiling j-boxes that nothing attaches to.

It's hard to tell what's original but some of that stuff was laid in to the sub floor under the original hardwood. I was helping my neighbors dad and he took a saws all to one of those pipes and got the surprise of his life. It was the other neighbors living room power. Fortunately we had a sparky on the way for something else.

My electrician once warned me that some of those old thin wall pipes still have gas hooked to them. I think some of the old conduit may have been gas pipe for gas lamps at one point.

I gutted my place and found heavy black pipe with wire, thin wall pipe with no wire and some with and miles of armored cable and some emt conduit. No nob and tube though or any traces of it

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

21. Thanks bin sober, thats interesting

My grand dad was electrician as was my father. You know something about the old ways, I don't remember much about my old grand dad but her did leave me a book, the niagara power project. I would love to get into some of those old buildings in Chicago and get a look around at some of that.

The niagara power project running power to Chicago was a huge experiment way back when.
Over in Niagara Falls Canada the old water turbine plant still exists from back in the day.

I couldn't see it from my back porch ! but is was in plain view- just look across the lower niagara river.

Western New York

I heard so many scary stories about incidents /accidents around electricity, I decided never will I become an electrician ! but of course those scary stories had nothing to do with residential electrical work. My old dad was a great one for advanced theory.The work shop in the basement was pretty cool too ! The laboratory it was called by friends as a youngster.

Again, thanks for the input. !

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

15. Jeff47's option 3 is a common cure.

You add the ground at plugs where the ground is needed most. Kitchen.bath wherever else in the house you think one is required. People like to have a grounding outlet at their computer stations.

In some cases it is moreso easy to simply add a plug using 12/2 with ground ,grounding the ground wire to a water line . You can tie into power at a junction box.If you don't have a basemeant it's all up in crawl space - ceiling. The access is usually in a closet. You fallow the wiring to where it runs up or down the wall to the plugs and lights. It goes a lot quicker as a two person job.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

16. If you go the route of grounding selected outlets

the ground wire color coded green insulated 12 gage wire is recommended to your outlet green screw and routed down to a water line . At electrical supply or home depot or some such place you can buy the connector for the water lines in either galvanized or copper 1/2 " 3/4 " and on up. The connector has a screw at the top for the ground wire. Of course the connector attach's to the water line or grounding post.