It's an older house, circa 1940. It was built by a professional contractor who built the house for himself. It's quite well built and it has a lot of funky features, like built-in dressers, which you wouldn't find in a house unless it was a "custom job". We plan to fix it up as close to original as we can without spending tons of money. Mostly all it needs is paint, wallpaper and junk like that.

The one thing that troubles me is the wiring. 99% of it is sound so I'm not worried about old wiring. There's a new panel box in the basement with all new breakers, etc. This is good.

My problem is that the place was built before 3-wire, grounded outlets were required. Consequently, there isn't a 3-prong outlet in the place. We will need to plug computers, microwaves and the like in and I don't want to have a house full of 2-prong adaptors. I will have to replace many of the outlets with the proper ones.

Thing is that there are no ground wires run through the walls. I checked to see if the wall boxes were grounded. They are not. (In a lot of houses I have worked in, even if there is no separate ground wire, the boxes are grounded. All you have to do is hook the green wire to the box.)

I went to the basement and took the cover off the panel. I found that the neutral bus is tied to the earth ground. (Bonded Neutral, right?)

So... Unless I'm mistaken, it would be possible to run a short length of wire from the ground lug on the new outlets I install to the neutral lug... Right?
Because there is no separate ground wire(s) this would be the only way to bring this house anywhere's near "up to speed" unless you wanted to pull all new wires and tie off a new ground to the earthing lug... right?

Also, with this arrangement, putting ground-fault receptacles in the bathroom/kitchen would be out of the question unless I pulled a separate ground wire... Correct? Yeah, I know GFCI's are a pain in the ass sometimes but, IF it's possible I would like to have one in the bathroom(s) at least. Would tying off to the nearest cold water pipe suffice in this case?

Just ask yourseof the question, "What would happen if you popped a neutral between the house and the power pole?". Your whole house's electrical system will be floating at 120 volts if your earth ground was defective. Very dangerous, indeed.

If it were my house, I would make sure there are plenty of grounding rods spaced (by code, I think) 6 feet apart. I would also bond them together, and run a separate lead to a cold water pipe where it enters the dwelling.

Whatever you do, make sure there is no chance any of your metal appliances would float at line voltage in event you lost the neutral.

I would also advise you contact several electrical contractors to see what is legal to do, and what is not. The reason I said several contractors is because there are some sleazy ones out there that may not tell you the full story. Don't do anything illegal....it is not worth the risk.

....and wait for some more posts to get other opinions, too. This can be a very touchy topic.

Think of it this way: Let's say you have a branch circuit with 10 outlets on it. The load connected to the last outlet will cause a voltage drop along the entire circuit. The amount of voltage difference depends on the circuit length, wire size, and the sum of the load currents. Each outlet will have voltage difference between it's neutral and an earth ground like a faucet in the kitchen. There will also be a voltage difference between this neutral and another circuit's neutral, which could be located adjacent to each other in the same room. Under certain conditions, like a high-current load or fault, this voltage can rise to a dangerous level.

Even if the voltage is small, the fault and/or difference current can be very high. Since there are no over-current protection devices in the neutral or the earth-ground (water pipe, gas pipe, etc) the current is limited by the circuit wiring which can easily be heated and burned by the excess current. Think of a soldering gun...a very low voltage (like a half a volt or so) and a very high current makes that tip glow.

OBTW…. Never, ever, NEVER, interrupt a neutral with an over-current device or a switch.

Neutrals are floated with respect to earth ground everywhere including all sub-panels. The only place a neutral should be connected to ground (“bonded”) is at the main panel where the service feed neutral AND main earth ground are connected.

I agree with Paul... call a couple of local reputable electricians for suggestions. You might luckout, I’ve seen unused bare ground wire snipped off short in the Romex...but it was there.

>>>Phil

Generally, the first panel once the electrical service enters the building (in a house, that is just about the only panel there is), The ground and neutral are one and the same. In fact, you will often just see the Neutral buss and both ground and neutral wires going to it. There is nothing wrong or unsafe about this. The Neutral bus is to be grounded according to code.

All sub panels after the first panel are to keep ground and neutral separate. Neutral is a current carrying conductor and ground is not. Thus after the ground rod of the building any circuit will cause neutral to deviate from ground potential. The neutral wires must follow Ohm's Law. They have a finite resistance and you are running a current through them thus the potential difference on the neutral wires will be current*resistance of the wire. Sure, the resistance of the wire is low so the voltage will be low but there none the less.

Thus the neutral in your outlet boxes is no longer ground and can not provide a safe nor appropriate ground connection.

When people ask me the difference between ground in neutral when both go to the same place I offer a simple test...

I offer that we go to the electrical panel, lift the ground and the neutral for a lighting circuit, they get the neutral, I get the ground and ask a helper to turn on the light....normally the light in their head goes on before the light switch!

So what is the best thing to do? Make sure you have a good ground (I think Paul has covered that). Then break out the 3 conductor romex and start pulling. Short of that (no pun intended) chase a ground wire for each circuit (I hate romex but you know the residential situation).

Steve

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Like Steve said, break out the Romex (if it is legal in your state) and start pulling.

One thing bad about connection the ground pin and the neutral together at the receptacle is that in event you pop the neutral, both the gound pin and the neutral could float at a dangerous level. Don't do that. Phil pointed out the reason very nicely.

If you don't pull romex, I'm afraid the safest way out is to ground the receptacles separately. That can be a pain in the butt.

The panel in the basement is practically brand new. It was updated about 5 years ago. The F.A.A. paid for it.

So, then, would it be safe to say that I should leave well enough alone except for the few outlets that need to have grounds?

Let's say, the fridge and the microwave need to have grounds. The lamps in the living room and bedrooms don't have grounded plugs anyway. The computer in the den should have at least one grounded outlet. The rest of the house can be left as-is unless there is any unsound wiring/connections.

Now, for those ones that need to be grounded, would it be safe to run a ground wire to the nearest cold water pipe? Pulling wires through the walls of an old house can be a bitch!

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I bought my 1924-era house in 1986. It was full of the old "knob-and-tube" wiring, and just a few updated ('50's) outlets in the kitchen.

The attic still has the knob and tube wire. It is only used for the overhead lights, and ceiling fans. I ran a single 12 gauge green copper wire to each box in the attic, and snaked the wire down to the panel. This saved me having to knock holes in the wall to pull new wires... The old knob and tube wire is 12 gauge hard copper. 12 gauge is rated for 20 amps, but I'm running mine at 15. No problems in 15 years!

Most of the other wiring comes up from the basement. I replaced most of this wire, and ran the single green ground wire to areas that were going to be trouble to rewire... the 1950 addition with a 9" crawlspace---what were they thinking?

The house had a 40 amp fuse panel in 1986 that was installed in 1950. I replaced it with a 125 amp CB panel with 24 breaker slots. Plenty of room for updating in the future.

The main improvement after the rewire was that I no longer was aware of the 'fridge turning on from any room in the house just by looking at a light...

I forgot to mention, the previous owners had electric space heaters in every room, and pennies behind the plug fuses in the box. The outlets that fed the heaters were discolored, and could not hold the plug snugly. When I went in to replace these outlets first, I discovered the general condition of all of the outlet wiring.

Good luck, Randy. You will LOVE owning your own house!

After thinking about it, I'm just going to pull new wires with grounds to the kitchen and the most important areas in the living room, den, etc. on the first floor. That way she can plug in the vacuum cleaner, and stuff like that. Besides, it's easier to pull from the first floor to the basement. The panel is right under the kitchen. Should be easy to pull... relatively speaking.
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About 5 years ago, a lot of the house was updated. Long story:

This house is right next to the airport. Not "near"... Right ON.
It's not under the traffic pattern or anything. Actually it's 90 deg. off the runway. About 20 years ago the Airport Authority extended the runway. When they did that it ended up putting the "runup area" right in the back yard. After several years of court battles, the Airport Authority got grant money from the F.A.A. for soundproofing about a dozen houses in the area. There are double-insulated windows. Insulation in the walls. Air conditioning was installed and the electrical panel was updated to 200 amp service.

This house is about as soundproof as it gets! You can't hear the cars driving down the street, or people walking by. You could probably light-off a bomb in the front yard and not hear it. You can't hear the jets take off at all. Most of the sound comes out the back end and we are 90 deg. off the side. When they turn the corner from the taxiway to the runway you can hear a little bit. With all the windows and doors shut you can hear a little bit of the "whine" that the engines make. That's it. When the wind is out of the south we get the occasional whiff of Jet-A exhaust.

You can't hear planes land at all. Mostly, they are gliding in, power off. Virtually no noise there. The insulation blocks out all of that sound. Heck! Even standing in the front yard you can only hear the biggest planes landing.

The only real problem is when you get a green horn pilot taking off in a twin engine turboprop. If he doesn't tune his engines/props correctly before he leaves the ramp you can hear the "Woom!! Woom!! Woom!!", sound of the two engines beating against each other. That doesn't happen very often because I THINK the airlines can get fined for noise violations if they let it happen too much.

Next year they are planning to extend the runway another 1,000 feet. That'll move the runup area just that much further away. By the time they come by the house 90% of them will already be in the air.

Besides, I like airplanes. We get front row seats for all the Air Shows! Most of the neighbors put up "Parking $10" signs in their yards too!

The house we just bought was built in 1978, and the stove in the Kitchen was not grounded at all. Instead of having a pig-tail on the back of the stove that plugged in to a grounded 220v outlet, there was just a THICK 3 conductor wire that came out of a hole in the drywall and was "hardwired" into the back of the stove. The wire had 3 conductors, the red "hot wire", the black "hot wire" and a white "neutral" which was also strapped to the frame of the stove.

I found out the hard way if you touched the handle on the front of the stove and the handle of the refrigerator at the same time... it will pick you up and throw you in the floor across the kitchen!! The day we moved into the house, we couldn't get the stove to work... only to find the breaker turned off in the power panel. When I flipped the beaker on, there was enough "juice" flowing through the frame of the stove to make the pilot lights on the controls of the stove to burn dimly... with all of the knobs in the "OFF" position!!

We called an electrical contractor and he came out and re-ran all new wiring to the kitchen. Costs us about $900.00, but well worth it.

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Barry Floyd
Floyd Entertainment Group
Lebanon, Tennessee

Stardust Drive-In Theatre
Watertown, Tennessee

"NEC 210-8
(a) Dwelling Units. All 125-volt, single phase, 15- and 20-ampere receptacles installed in the locations specified below shall have ground-fault circuit-interrupter protection for personnel.
(1) Bathrooms.
(2) Garages and grade-level portions of unfinished accessory buildings used for storage or work areas.
(3) Outdoors
(4) Crawl spaces. Where the crawl space is at or below grade level
(5) Unfinished basements. For purposes of this section, unfinished basements are defined as portions or areas of the basement not intended as habitable rooms and limited to storage areas, work areas, and the like.
(6) Kitchens. Where receptacles are installed to serve countertop surfaces
(7) Wet bar sinks. Where receptacles are installed to serve the countertop surfaces and are located within 6ft. (1.83 m) of the outside edge of the wet bar sink."

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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