House electrical issues

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Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
First let me just say that I live in an apartment and I am not going to shell out for an electrician to answer these questions unless I absolutely have to. If you have knowledge about this information, even if it's not perfect, please share it. Don't give me one of those "I don't want to mislead you" things, because there's no way I'm taking it as the word of god anyways. I mean I could be asking you guys what 2+2 equals and there's a good chance I would mistrust you.

Only reason I am saying this is that people may not want to answer this stuff because it's kind of dangerous.

Anyways. Here's my issue. My apartment is pretty much completely ungrounded. There are a bunch of 3-prong plugs but none of them read as grounded except one outlet that is positioned directly above my stove, not a very useful position. My concern is twofold:

1) Equipment damage. I am very concerned that power surges and the like could come in and destroy my equipment. I know that surge protectors won't do anything if you're 3 prong plugs are ungrounded. I've thought about getting a UPS for my TV/XBOX/Computer, but I'm not even sure that the UPS will do anything. From what I can tell nothing will do anything other than grounding the plug.

2) Safety. I really don't want my place to burn down. For this I am *pretty* sure that adding a GFCI adapter will keep the stuff from bursting into flames. It won't protect the equipment but will keep it from starting fires.

So, does anyone know much about this stuff? Is my understanding essentially correct?

Also, more on this issue, is it legal for my house to be ungrounded like this? I guess code will vary from state to state, but does anyone have any knowledge about this in their state? And how could I find more information about this?
 
strawman

strawman

Legally your landlord is in violation of your local fire code. If they do not repair the situation tell them you will be writing letters to your local renter's association, DA, your local building board, your local firefighters, etc. The problem MUST be repaired, or the building will not be considered habitable.

Most places have rental housing services or similar:
http://www.a2gov.org/government/communityservices/planninganddevelopment/housing/Pages/default.aspx
Every rental unit requires a permit, and they perform inspections on demand.

EVERY state/county/city/township/bourough/etc has rules regarding fire safety that include proper wiring of receptacles.

1) Damage

Yes, you are more susceptible to lightning/surge problems with ungrounded plugs. There really isn't much you can do about it, other than using a long extension cord from the one grounded outlet that covers all your expensive/critical electrical devices. You can't create a "virtual" ground, so you have to make your landlord fix the situation.

2) Safety

This is a fire hazard. Many electrical devices depend on a good ground in order to avoid fires. Without a good ground, the equipment may not fail faster, but when it does fail it may do more damage as the current might flow unrestricted to other items in the house, rather than to the case and to ground.

Worse yet, though, is that you are placing yourself in great danger of electrocution. Most equipment relies on the ground to make sure the case, screws, and any touch-able metal parts are safe for human touch. When they aren't properly grounded they tend to float at tens of volts, and sometimes hundreds of volts. Touching them may shock you depending on a variety of other factors, even if the equipment is operating correctly.

However, if the equipment goes bad, you are not protected from the full line current - which would normally be shunted to ground long before you could touch it.

I recall using a bad extension cord with no ground once to power a computer across the basement - lee than 25 feet from the properly grounded outlet. The computer was electrically hot - if you touched the metal case you would feel the current pulsing through you. I eventually found the reason and cut the cord up (if you just throw it away someone might find it in the trash and try to use it).

You don't want to mess with this stuff.

A GFCI will only protect you from equipment failure which allows the current go from the line to the case, through a person or another object. It will not prevent many types of electrical fires, though it will prevent some.

An arc fault circuit interrupter would give you a little more coverage for fire issues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc-fault_circuit_interrupter) but I'm not sure that you can buy those as inline plugs, they seem to be available mostly as circuit breakers for electrical service panels.

Even though, technically, your landlord can't kick you out for bringing this up, if they don't fix it and you do have to alert the authorities, then it's likely that your lease won't last long, and they'll find reasons not to refund your deposit. Go to your landlord, though, it's simply not worth the risk. You don't need to threaten them - at least not at first. Just let them know what you found out, and that you believe it's putting you at risk of fire or personal injury, and you need them to fix it. Put it in writing. Put it in writing again and send them a certified letter - which should get their attention. If they don't come out in a timely manner, remind them of the issue, and indicate that for your own safety you'll be alerting to your local rental permit authority. Then get ready to move - if they don't respond quickly to this risk, they are very likely putting your life at risk in other ways that you don't know about.

Regardless, make sure it's fixed, or that you alert your housing authority so the next renter - who may not even notice - doesn't end up in the newspaper as a crispy critter in the third page news.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Arc fault circuit breakers are pretty much required in bedrooms these days to prevent the smoldering-fire-in-the-wall-kills-you-in-your-sleep problem. I am also in the position of having many ungrounded outlets in my house which I have had to 'fake' into grounded outlets (by joining neutral and ground inside the junction box). This is electrically the same thing as a "proper" grounded outlet, but doing this is less safe because the shorter jump is less likely to trip the fuse/breaker fast enough to avoid shock. Also, there's that part about having to dig around inside your receptacle which could end up hazardous for the armchair electrician.

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

PatrThom said:
joining neutral and ground inside the junction box. This is electrically the same thing as a "proper" grounded outlet
Click to expand...
Actually no - the ground wire should not have any current flowing on it due to voltage drop. Once you start pushing current down the neutral wire, there's a voltage drop along the wire, which then pushes the false ground you've created at the outlet away from true ground by several, and possibly dozens, of volts.

Nominally it'll only be 3-10 volts, but it's simply not safe, and is certainly against code.

The fun really happens when you get into that situation where the ground is pushed up away from true ground, then you connect that device to another device (via audio or video cables, USB, etc) which is closer to ground. You start pushing a sizeable amount of current along the ground/shield of the cable, which then becomes a fire hazard in addition to damaging your equipment and introducing ground loop hum which degrades the signal. It's less likely to happen as long as everything shares the same ground, but consider that you might be connected to a cable line that shared with other houses or units. You also become significantly more susceptible to lightning strikes and power surges.

Everyone's electrical box has neutral tied to ground - it's the current pushed along the wire and subsequent voltage drop that makes it unsafe to treat the neutral as a ground.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Right. Like I said, it's an imperfect solution, but noticeably better than running ground-free. The few critical items I have are isolated (or double-insulated) anyway. I blame my situation on the fact that my house was built in the 1950's (before grounded outlets) and was subsequently upgraded by people who were not clear on the concept. I just try to do the best I can without having to pull fresh cable seeing as how I intend to vacate this house as soon as possible, though I do often consider running a third wire to the pipes to give the house a true ground.

The single biggest hazard in my house right now is that too many of the outlets have the hot/neutral flipped, which is always a surprise. It's one of those things I'll get to when I'm not involved in a dozen or so other projects. In the meanwhile, we own two outlet testers.

--Patrick
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
So, if I wanted to run a ground cable (all ghetto style, meaning not in the walls) from my three prong boxes alllllll the way outside to a lightning rod that is there, do you think that would work?
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Until the area around your house gets stuck by lightning, yes. Though if the wire to your outside ground is longer than the wire on neutral running back to your box, it will be less effective as a safety.

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

Necronic said:
So, if I wanted to run a ground cable (all ghetto style, meaning not in the walls) from my three prong boxes alllllll the way outside to a lightning rod that is there, do you think that would work?
Click to expand...
No, that would still be unsafe since it's not tied to the neutral at the electrical box. May make the floating ground problem worse.

If I were in your situation and couldn't get it fixed, I'd honestly put tape over the ground holes of all the bad outlets in the house, and only use two prong devices with them. Use long extensions from the few good outlets to the devices that require ground. If you have outlets with hot and neutral reversed, tape them over completely.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Wait the three prong ground is supposed to be tied to the neutral at the circuit breaker? Or do you mean at the outlet itself? Because that's not how I understood the third prong/true ground. I don't thiink those are supposed to be connected as the neutral operates at a slightly higher voltage than the true ground.

Edit: Ok, I think I see what you meaen, I found a good diagram here:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/hsehld.html

So the neutral and the ground both go to the neutral tie block.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Nope. Once you get back to the box, neutral and ground get attached to the same lug. Think of it like a second drain. They both go to the same place, they just take different paths.

--Patrick
 
strawman

strawman

There is one ground point for the whole house, which occurs at the circuit panel. At that point the neutral is tied to the ground. Due to the currents along the neutral wire, the neutral at a distant outlet may be higher than ground. That's why there's two wires, even though they are connected at the service panel.

 
PatrThom

PatrThom

That's what my "total home wiring" book says, ayep. Pictures and all.

The idea is to create an environment where all paths to ground are shorter orless resistant (lower Ohms) than the one through you. Electricity will always try to take the easiest path to ground*, and that ground wire makes it more likely that route will not be through you.

--Patrick
*This is why lightning tends to strike the tallest object. Even a dead tree will conduct electricity better than 20 feet of air.
 
M

makare

I know nothing about electrical stuff but that pic of the queen cracked me up so I had to share.
LOLS.
 
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