I’ve recently become the owner of a home that was constructed in the mid 1950s (in the US). As such, not all the outlets are grounded, three-prong receptacles, since that wasn’t code-required at the time. It looks like a few have been added or upgraded over the years, but there are still many that are ungrounded. What is the best way to go about converting those receptacles to be grounded? Will that require a professional? It seems like probably the kind of electrical work that I am capable of doing myself, but I am also very much not an electrician.
First of all make sure you do have a real ground, as in these cases most probably they only added a three prong receptacles wothout the third wire.
And even if the ground wire is there, follow it all the way… Since i have seen that groubd line cabled up to the main panel, then dangling unconnected so many times…
Is this a home or an apartment? '50s apartment buildings most probably don’t even have a common ground at all.
It’s a single family residential home. I’d hazard a guess that there isn’t a ground wire, but I’ll take a look.
In the event there isn’t a ground wire, it sounds like my options are 1) rewire with the ground wire included or 2) install GFI outlets (circumventing the need for a ground wire). Is that right?
Get a small voltage tester. All it needs to have is two wires and a little light. They sell them at any hardware store.
Go find one of your three prong outlets. Look at the two slots. If the ground pin is at the bottom, the left slot (taller than the right) is the neutral, should have a white wire. The shorter slot on the right is hot.
Try your tester by putting one of the probes in the neutral and one in the hot. It should light up.
Now put one in the ground pin hole and the other in hot. If its grounded, the tester will light. If it does not, that ground is not connected to anything.
Word of caution: some jackasses will connect the neutral to the ground on the back of the outlet. This is stupid and dangerous, but it will pass a quick test like the one we did. You should take at least one of the three prong outlets apart and check. If they did it once, they probably did it many times.
Turn off the power to that outlet (use your new tester to verify that the power is off) and pull the outlet apart. You might get lucky and find that the wiring had a ground wire (bare copper wire) that was just tucked away. You can just get a proper grounded outlet and attach the bare wire to the green screw.
Before you pop the bubbly if you find that bare copper wire, you need to test it again. With the outlet pulled out (leave wires connected to original outlet) probe the hot (black) wire and touch the bare copper ground wire. The tester should light up. If it does not, the copper ground wire is not connected to the ground in the breaker box (or in some older homes, the ground wire is connected to copper plumbing).
If the ground does not work, you can go on a hunt to find out why. Most houses, one outlet will daisy chain to another. If an upstream outlet has ground wires, but were not connected, that will be a problem. You can work your way backward to see if you can find and connect them all. If you’re taking the outlets apart, you may as well expect to do this anyway.
If the ground was tied to plumbing and someone replaced a copper section with a nonmetallic (pex, PVC) the ground will no longer work.
I would advise to at least try to figure out what is going on. You’ll learn a lot in the process and as a homeowner, its really important to understand your electrical system. Open a few outlets and probe (carefully). If you hit the wall, you may need to get an electrician in. They can probably tell you what’s up and then you can do the gruntwork of rewiring outlets.
Setting up a ground system isn’t that hard, it involves bury a few rods and do some wiring. I did it for my house, but I had an electrician expert tell me what to do and how yo do it properly.
Said so, get ground wires absolutely and a ground “stuff” (not native English speaker don’t know the correct word).
I would not try to create a separate path to ground. The ground should be bonded to neutral at one and only one place: at or just behind the main panel.
GFCI is rated to protect two wire receptacles downstream of the GFCI, but check with the local authorities on the subject.
Depending on how they ran the wire and the type of wire it may not require a professional but if you dont feel comfortable doing the work there is nothing wrong with hiring an electrician.
To verify if a ground wire was run, there are two things you can do:
- Check existing receptacles
This means turning of a receptacles at the breaker, removing the cover and pulling the receptacles out of the box to look at the wire run. If it has a black/white and bare copper (or copper clad aluminum) then there is a ground wire in the box. If you dont see a bare copper wire or if the wire was cut short at the point the wire enters the box then an electrician is probably required.
- Check the breaker box
To check your breaker box, flip the main breaker that runs service to your house. It should be the 50/100/200 amp breaker at the top that is not part of the column of smaller breakers. Then remove the cover around the breaker box to expose the wiring inside the box. All the wires from your house should run into this box and if you have ground wires they should be connected to the ground bus inside the breaker. Again you should see lots of black/white wires and bare copper wires that are ground wires. If they are all cut at the point the cables enter the box you will probably need to run new wire and that will require an electrician.
Just want to add a note that flipping the main breaker de-energizes the rails but there will still be hot wires in the panel from the meter box. Exercise caution.
Fair point, they should not need to dig around to see the ground wires, but with the cover off extra caution is recommended. Dont stick anything INTO the box even with the main breaker off as the wires leading to that breaker are still hot.
Im all about DIYing to save money, but if you have the slightest doubt about your ability to do electrical work, hire a professional. The potential downside to making mistakes here is electrocution and/or your house burning down with you and your family inside.
Thank you for the info! I like DIY, and I’m reasonably handy, but I have no interest in accidentally burning my house down lol, so I’ve got no shame about hiring a professional.
Sounds like it might be at least worth it to get a pro out to take a look and provide a quote
The short answer is that there’s a really strong chance that you’ve got 2 conductor wire with no ground going to the receptacles if they’ve not installed electrical outlets with a third prong. Fixing that would require running a ground cable to every outlet so configured which means cutting a lot of holes. All things considered I’d probably do a re-wire at that point. It brings into question the type of wire used and the safety of the electrical panel etc. These things age, and standards change.
I would personally want to check the receptacles that have a ground prong to make sure that the ground is actually hooked up to something and that it is not simply connected to the neutral, which are both bad things.
Get yourself a receptacle tester and a chicken stick (non contact voltage tester). They come in a kit from Klein. NCVT1PKIT
Given the variables, you’d be best to consult a professional.
Thanks! I’ll grab one of the tester kits and do a little more digging to see what I’m dealing with
Are you looking to get them swapped over to 3 prong for general use or are you looking to get them grounded for something specific? If you just want to plug 3 prong devices in you could look at installing gfi/gfci outlets. You’d need to investigate your lines but installation is pretty easy. If you need the outlets grounded for specific use I believe you can run a simple copper wire. Might require more looking into since I’m not super familiar with that one.
GFCI doesn’t change the fact that there is potentially no ground wire.
Well no, but short of a rewire, a gfci with sticker is the code-compliant way to plug in three pin plugs to an ungrounded receptacle.
A rewire is the right solution but utterly impractical for many. Just silently swapping in new receptacles and leaving the ground unconnected is easy but not compliant. This is the middle ground.
Just general use so I’m not limited on where I can use my 3-prong appliances
Gfci or rewire.
If you put in a gfci I’d connec the ground to the metal box - wood is not a great ground but with the gfci doing safety purposes wood is enough for some things that want ground (that is a shield). If you can get a ground wire to enough places connected to enough different points it will fool most ground testers - remember that this is only useful if a gfci is providing safety and your goal is to fool the other reasons you want a ground.
If you don’t have three conductor Romex running to the outlet, you really only have 2 options.
First is to pull new wire to the outlet. Second is to drive in a grounding rod outside, drill a hole through the wall, and run a wire into the receptacle.
