What to do depends on a couple of things, most having to do with how the house is wired now.

In a lot of houses built about the time yours was the receptacles are two wire but the electrical boxes they are mounted in are grounded. In that case it is a fairly easy fix to just change out the receptacles. We get $15 per receptacle to change them out in an empty house.

It's easy to tell if the boxes are grounded or not and you don't have to take the cover off of the receptacle. Take a little meter and measure for voltage between the receptacle slot on the right and the screw that holds on the cover plate. You may have to scrape a bit of paint off of the screw to get a good reading.

If you get a voltage reading it means the box is grounded. This is how the little adapters that Lisa used work - they get their ground from the cover plate screw. If the plate screw isn't grounded then all they do is to allow you to plug in a three wire device without adding any protection, as she found when she tried to run her computer.

No ground at the boxes? Not to worry. The fix is not all that expensive.

Assuming your state follows the National Electrical Code (I think they all do now) you are allowed to convert two wire receptacles to three wire if there is a GFI at the start of each wiring run. You don't need a GFI at each location, only at the start of each run. This GFI can be the type that replaces a receptacle or a GFI circuit breaker installed in the electrical panel.

There are an alarming number of home inspectors, electricians and inspectors who do not know this section of the code (I've gotten in to arguments in the field) but it's there and the resulting installation is perfectly safe. I can find chapter and verse in the code if you need it.

It's a little tricky to figure out which receptacles are the ones at the start of a run but in an empty house it's not all that complex. Only ungrounded receptacle runs have to be protected and in a house like yours there usually not more than 4 or 5 ungrounded runs like that. The kitchen, laundry and furnace receptacles are probably already grounded so you won't need to do those. GFI receptacles cost about $15 and take about 1/2 hour to change out I'm faster than that) so no big deal.

Rewiring the house is extreme overkill and no one ever does it just to get three wire receptacles. The GFI solution works just fine as far as safety.

If the seller is unreasonable, your only recourse (assuming you still have the ability under the contract, which is usually the case until the inspection contingency passes) is to walk away and cancel the deal.

That may not be worth it to you. Do remember that people were living in this house without it burning down from electrical faults.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
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

Yes, your fridge - and any fridge made after about 1960 - has a three wire plug and requires either a grounded receptacle or a GFI for safety. Chances are however, if I remember the age of your house correctly - that the kitchen receptacles are already grounded so not to worry.

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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.

It's not a big deal, really, and there are thousands of houses houses out there wired just like yours (and much, much worse) and it all works fine.

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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.

I'd ignore this and make a mental note to change the way they are wired at some future date. Make sure the cords are not frayed.

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

Yes, and the only ones you really have to do for safety are ones where you have to plug in three wire plugs. I'd make sure to do the kitchen if necessary, the garage and the bathrooms and would not feel bad about leaving the rest for later. This is a fairly simple DIY project BTW - one you could do or perhaps hire a maintenance guy on campus to do on the side.

Steve, I'm gonna have to read that a few more times to digest it...

Quirt:

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walk away and cancel the deal

We really don't want to do that. I have been watching the market here for forever now, and I don't think we'll be able to get a house that ticks off all of our boxes the way this one does, unless we either pay significantly more (which we pretty much can't) or buy a true fixer upper (which we don't want to do).

Unfortunately, the seller probably knows (or has figure out) that about us by now. :P

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Do remember that people were living in this house without it burning down from electrical faults.

This is, of course, the thing I keep coming back to. So yes, I want to figure out a reasonable middle ground.

To do that, for starters, I think I need to better understand Steve's post!

Don't cancel the deal. Every house in your town with in a radius of your work is wired just like this.

The code didn't change to grounded outlets until the 70's in most areas.

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Don't cancel the deal. Every house in your town with in a radius of your work is wired just like this.

Yes, and our current house (where we have lived as renters since 2015) is probably 10 years older than the house we're getting ready to buy, so I do think this doesn't need to be something to panic about!

And no, we don't want to cancel this deal. The trick is to not panic, and try to filter the inspector's recommendations a bit.

Which you all here are helping so much with!

Ok, here's one of the things that was written in the report re the outlets:

quote:

"There are two-prong and GFCI receptacles installed. These are not grounded. However, this is a common solution for systems that are not grounded"

This one isn't grounded, it's in the basement. It's hard to tell from this pic, but the middle light is one, left and right ones are not:



This one is grounded, it's on the back porch. Middle light and right light are on:


So, Steve, the inspector obviously used a meter, and that method is different from what you're describing, right?

Also, the GFCI ones will be three-prong and have the trip mechanism, right? But they're not grounded to the ground, but still trip?

I'm getting more confused rather than less...

If you are convinced you don't want to cancel, and if you know that the seller won't negotiate, then the answer is nothing needs to be done immediately.

If you aren't going to cancel and he isn't going to negotiate, there's no point worrying about it.

You'll undoubtedly have a list of things you'd like to do to the house, over time. Add this to the list and don't stress about it.

If I were you, i would NOT even mention this "problem" to the seller. To do so makes you look demanding and unreasonable. Considering how fraught earlier negotiations were, you do not need to go there.

You are going to have to do a lot of things yourself. Welcome to home ownership. Plus, in my view, this is not much of a hazard, or certainly not the type of hazard that merits asking for an allowance. You went under contract seeing for yourself that there are ungrounded outlets. It's not a surprise. Nor is it atypical. Nor is it especially dangerous.

Not worth the risk of pissing off the seller.

Voice of experience here.

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the answer is nothing needs to be done immediately.(snip)
Add this to the list and don't stress about it.

Quirt, this, good advice. If we can wait on it, I'm fine with waiting. I think the inspector kind of put me into a tail spin!

piqué, I agree, we don't want to piss of the seller.

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You are going to have to do a lot of things yourself. Welcome to home ownership.

Yes, we get that. And we're prepared for that. The trouble is, there are repairs the seller agreed to do (that we have in writing) and he has only done about 2/3s of those. OTOH, hallelujah! he's done something. (the bar is low with this guy).

I think he may not have realized all the details about what he was agreeing to when he signed off on the electrical repair items.

We had our second inspection yesterday, and the inspector flagged things that were either not completed, or not completed as expected. Most of those items aren't deal breakers or are easy and inexpensive fixes. But since he's signed off on them, we expect him to complete those repairs.

And then when someone starts throwing around words like "electrical fire" it's a little hard to ignore.

So, for example, in the repair addendum, it included the following:

"replace circuit breaker panel"

"any outlets which are currently three-pronged should be properly grounded by a licensed electrician"

The seller signed off on those, writing "all repairs agreed to"

Well, he didn't actually replace the panel, and the outlets are still not grounded, though note that the inspector wrote "There are two-prong and GFCI receptacles installed. These are not grounded. However, this is a common solution for systems that are not grounded."

So, we want him to replace that panel.

And then the outlets. There are GFCIs, good. But the outlets aren't grounded -- bad? that's what I'm trying to figure out.

So, no, we don't want to piss of the seller, but we do want him to do what he has agreed - in writing - to do.

Having said that, if the GFCIs are sufficient, and the inspector is just being very by-the-book, then we maybe can say, ok, the GFCIs are in place, that's fine. Just do the breaker panel and we can move forward.

My first concern is, is it dangerous, and then second, how expensive is it to fix.

Oh oh oh. Well now that's a horse of a different color. I must have missed the part that he already agreed to the repairs and just hasn't done them. In that case, let your realtor handle it. We faced the same thing--jobs agreed to weren't done, or sometimes were done later than agreed to.

What does your contract say your recourse is? If agreed to repairs are not done by closing, can you be reimbursed for having it done yourselves at closing?

Whether not doing it is dangerous or how expensive it is stopped being your problem when he agreed to take care of it.

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What does your contract say your recourse is? If agreed to repairs are not done by closing, can you be reimbursed for having it done yourselves at closing?

Here's what our repair addendum says:

"if seller fails to complete repairs agreed upon in this agreement, the buyer shall 1) accept the property in its present condition, 2) negotiate and reach agreement with the seller for different terms (e.g., other repairs, compensation, price reduction, escrow), or 3) terminate this agreement by delivered notice and potentially seek legal remedies against the seller"

I don't like that. It's not strong enough in our favor, much too much wiggle room in "reach an agreement."

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Whether not doing it is dangerous or how expensive it is stopped being your problem when he agreed to take care of it.

Yes, in theory. But because there is some vagueness in the wording in the repair addendum about the grounding of outlets, I think this particular issue is in a gray area. So if it's not super expensive and something we can wait on, I would be happy to have one thing we could say "ok, the outlets, we'll take care of" -- because there are a bunch of other things we need him to do that he's already signed off on and we'll be pushing on (e.g. the panel).

Ugh, this whole thing is going to be a battle till the bitter end!

What does he think is wrong with the circuit breaker panel? Is a Federal Pacific?

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Is a Federal Pacific?

Yes, and in the first inspection (October) the inspector flagged it, so we put in the repair addendum "replace circuit break panel" and the seller agree to and signed off on it.

So that one is one we're not going to budge on.