So, here's a fun question. In an older house, with two prong electrical outlets, how important is it to have those outlets redone so that they are properly grounded and can take a three prong plug?

What about replacing the old two prong with a GFCI outlet that trips, but is not grounded?

To the Steve Miller-mobile!

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
So, here's a fun question. In an older house, with two prong electrical outlets, how important is it to have those outlets redone so that they are properly grounded and can take a three prong plug?

What about replacing the old two prong with a GFCI outlet that trips, but is not grounded?

Short answer: it depends.

I’ll expand on that when I don’t have to reply on my phone.

It's not critical unless you need a GFI circuit.

Steve thanks in advance!

Mark, is the different between GFI and GFCI that GFI is for more powerful uses?

I will leave the explaining up to Steve, but I will say that for years in my young adulthood, I rented apartments in old houses with 2 prong outlets. When I needed to plug something in with 3 prongs, I used a 99 cent adapter from Home Depot. Never had an issue until I bought some kind of surge protector thing for my computer that screamed (this super loud alarm) when I plugged it into my non-grounded outlets. After a quick consult with my dad, I ended up running some random piece of speaker wire that I had laying round from the ground plug on my adapter to the cast iron radiator (which somehow provided a ground). The alarm stopped. The house did not burn down. The surge protector and computer ran happily for years.

I do not recommend you try this in your own home though!

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Steve thanks in advance!

Mark, is the different between GFI and GFCI that GFI is for more powerful uses?

There is no difference. Just a different way of saying the same thing.

With no ground wire, you will never have any surge protection even with the best surge protectors.

It is also more of a shock hazard, but, so is a grounded outlet without GFI vs. one with GFI.

Grounded outlets are always better. Always.

But it is not required for proper operation of most electric devices. Most if not all toasters, irons, hair dryers, space heaters, AC/DC converters, for instance, are ungrounded, two prong, plugs. But they are "double insulated". Sometimes due to exposed heater wires, like a toaster, hair dryer, or space heater. Being ungrounded, actually helps prevent electric shocks when the user is fishing around inside a toaster with a fork.

Interesting read.

https://electronics.stackexcha...ont-have-third-prong

quote:

Originally posted by markj:
With no ground wire, you will never have any surge protection even with the best surge protectors.

It is also more of a shock hazard, but, so is a grounded outlet without GFI vs. one with GFI.

Grounded outlets are always better. Always.

But it is not required for proper operation of most electric devices. Most if not all toasters, irons, hair dryers, space heaters, AC/DC converters, for instance, are ungrounded, two prong, plugs. But they are "double insulated". Sometimes due to exposed heater wires, like a toaster, hair dryer, or space heater. Being ungrounded, actually helps prevent electric shocks when the user is fishing around inside a toaster with a fork.

This is really helpful, thank you.

So, in the house we're planning to buy, almost none of the outlets are grounded. The people who live there now have had big tvs, computers and so on plugged into these outlets, presumably with no problems.

The inspector has recommended that the outlets be grounded. But I believe the inspector sort of has to give the most conservative advice, and advice in line with current building code etc. So I'm trying to figure out how to interpret his recommendation.

Also, as far as I can tell, it's probably really expensive to do the work to ensure that *all* outlets are grounded. And the seller is... shall we say, kind of a pita so I'm trying to figure out if there's a reasonable middle ground.

For example, I'm wondering if we could just have a few done now (say one in each room) and deal with the rest later.

Anyway, any thoughts, advice, comments are appreciated!

Can you get an estimate to ground all the outlets from a licensed electrician?

Ask for an allowance for the full amount or even a portion of the estimate.

The ground does two things. In case there is a short in an appliance where a wire touches the case (a "short-to-ground), the ground wire is there to make sure the circuit breaker trips. On a two wire circuit the case on the refrigerator could be live you would not know it until you grabbed the handle and got a shock. "Double insulated" tools and such get around this by using a lot of plastic in their manufacture such that a short circuit to the case is nearly impossible.

The second purpose is to reduce electrical "noise" on the systems plugged in. Modern electronics are less fussy about this than older ones were but there are still some electronics that won'r run right on two wire receptacles.

Yes, the inspector has to be conservative. Our home inspector noted that the garage lights (neon tube ballasts hung from the ceiling beams and plugged into extension cords) were not to code, and then told us that if we asked the seller to bring them up to code, 99.99% they'd just rip them down and trash them.

I had to have all my outlets redone - its not crazy expensive but its not something I could have afforded right after closing either.

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Can you get an estimate to ground all the outlets from a licensed electrician?

Yes, I think that's what we're going to have to do. Of course on my dime.

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Ask for an allowance for the full amount or even a portion of the estimate.

This is of course the reasonable thing to do, and my real estate agent will be working on that today. Unfortunately, the seller is not very reasonable....

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
The ground does two things. In case there is a short in an appliance where a wire touches the case (a "short-to-ground), the ground wire is there to make sure the circuit breaker trips. On a two wire circuit the case on the refrigerator could be live you would not know it until you grabbed the handle and got a shock. "Double insulated" tools and such get around this by using a lot of plastic in their manufacture such that a short circuit to the case is nearly impossible.

The second purpose is to reduce electrical "noise" on the systems plugged in. Modern electronics are less fussy about this than older ones were but there are still some electronics that won'r run right on two wire receptacles.

Steve, thank you for these explanations!

With the refrigerator example, do you mean, you could get shocked from grabbing the door handle to open it? I wonder if the fridge plug is grounded... The fridge is fairly new btw

I'm having a hard time figuring out how urgent an issue this is. And of course from the seller's POV, they've been living there for 10 years, I'm sure it seems like a non-issue to them. Hence our problem.

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Our home inspector noted that the garage lights (neon tube ballasts hung from the ceiling beams and plugged into extension cords) were not to code, and then told us that if we asked the seller to bring them up to code, 99.99% they'd just rip them down and trash them.

Piqaboo, that's one thing I'm worried about with making too many requests! It's better at this point for us to try to do most of it. But we want those allowances...

Re this:

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I had to have all my outlets redone - its not crazy expensive but its not something I could have afforded right after closing either.

Can you give me an idea of what "not crazy expensive" is? $1000? $5000? $10,000?

Also, for Steve or anyone else here, is this something where we could do a few outlets at a time?