Electrical question...grounding?

[slycat]

I have 2 outlets in the living room. When i plug in my surge protector the GROUND light doesn't come on.
I have expensive stuff in the living room HT so obviously i'm worried... Any way i can fix that?...

Is grounding important?

 

[TitanDiddly]

Does it come on in any other other rooms? If so, there's a ground fault. Call an electrician.

 

[redly]

I have a similar dilema in my house. Old knob and tube wiring w/ no ground wire. Easiest thing I can think of to do is install and outlet (preferable on an inside wall) pull the cable up and make sure to attach grounds on both ends.

OR, you could just run a single conductor ground wire from the green screw on the outlet back to your breaker box.

 

[ZeroEffect]

yes, grounding is important!

!call an electrician!

You don't want to be messing with 120 volts if you don't know anything
about electricity. It sucks to have to pay for someone to come out, etc.
but some things are worth every penny.

 

[TechnoKid]

Open ground. Its common in older houses.

Good surge protectors do not shunt all the voltage and current from a lighting strike to the ground; this is because the surge can [possibly] travel back onto the neutral (where the neutral and ground bus bars are bonded at the service panel) and damage other equipment that is not even on the same circuit. A good surge suppressor will have capacitors to store teh excess energy instead of shunting it to ground.

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: TechnoKid
Open ground. Its common in older houses.

Good surge protectors do not shunt all the voltage and current from a lighting strike to the ground; this is because the surge can [possibly] travel back onto the neutral (where the neutral and ground bus bars are bonded at the service panel) and damage other equipment that is not even on the same circuit. A good surge suppressor will have capacitors to store teh excess energy instead of shunting it to ground.

uhm..so does that mean i gotta worry...or no worry?

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: PhasmatisNox
Does it come on in any other other rooms? If so, there's a ground fault. Call an electrician.

Bedroom outlets show GROUNDED=ON. Living rooms show GROUNDED=OFF.

 

[Ornery]

If you're worried about your safety, you can hook up a GFCI receptacle without the ground, and be legal and safe. For your equipment's safety, run a 12ga ground wire to a water pipe and connect it with a ground clamp. Make sure the polarity of your wires is correct!

 

[mrrman]

definetely grounding is important...many older homes that were not wired with gnds had a gnd stake in their lawn which would take all grnd to earth. Nowadays gnds are mandatory in all houses and it wouldnt pass an electrical inspection without. GFCI's are a good idea if the actuall gnd is not present or the other alternative(may be expensive but worth it) is to rewire the house or gnd points in question and run this to a service breaker.

 

[Eli]

Have similar issues in this house. Old house, 2-prong outlets.

We have concrete floors. If you touch the concrete floor in your bare feet, and touch anything metal that is plugged in - you recieve a little shock.

Infact, if you hold 1 lead of an LED and touch the other to the metal object, it will light.

I've got pictures around here somewhere.. lol

 

[Ornery]

Jesus Eli, fix that shlt! You've got reversed polarity on at least one of the outlets! :Q

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Ornery
Jesus Eli, fix that shlt! You've got reversed polarity on at least one of the outlets! :Q

lol, I was looking through one of the old threads I made about it..

LOL, nearly 2 years ago. :Q

So is that all it is? One outlet somewhere has its polarity reversed?

 

[Ornery]

Probably more than one. 40% of the ones in this house were reversed!

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Ornery
Probably more than one. 40% of the ones in this house were reversed!

Geesh, what a PITA. I'll have to get one of those checkers, and do all of them I guess.

 

[Ornery]

A "checker" won't tell you shlt. Use a multimeter and check voltage from hot to ground, and neutral to ground. That's the only way to be sure.

 

[slycat]

damn that sux...my landlord is a chinaman chinese...i can't even begin to explain this crap to him...

 

[Ornery]

Make your own outlet by your equipment, slycat. If you can run the ground from a cold water line to the back of your equipment, you can make your own gang box, using power from the available outlet, and your new ground. Even if the polarity is reversed in his outlet, you can put it right in your box. Just connect your gang box to his outlet via a heavy appliance cord (sacrifice the cord from a cheap power strip), and run your new ground through the same connector.

 

[slycat]

make my own outlet...omg.

any idea how much this would cost to get someone to come to do it? they prolly rip me a new one..

 

[mrrman]

Originally posted by: Eli
Have similar issues in this house. Old house, 2-prong outlets.

We have concrete floors. If you touch the concrete floor in your bare feet, and touch anything metal that is plugged in - you recieve a little shock.

Infact, if you hold 1 lead of an LED and touch the other to the metal object, it will light.

I've got pictures around here somewhere.. lol

Man this needs immediate attention....you gotta be nuts to let this go

 

[Ornery]

Sheesh, you build computers, you can do it! Go to Ace hardware, and tell them you want to make an extension cord, using a weatherproof gang box. It uses special connectors, which they should have. Tell them you have to run an earth ground from a cold water line, and they'll sell you the length of wire you need, as well as the grounding clamp.

I assume the outlet you're plugging into has three conductors, which would be against code, but it is what it is. Anyway, tell the Ace hardware guy what you have, and that you need a heavy appliance cord to connect to your box. Sacrificing a cheap power strip may be cheaper than anything else, but see what he suggests. Run the ground and cord into the box and make the connections. Use a multimeter to double check everything. You absolutely MUST own a multimeter if you don't already, so now is the time to buy one. When you're done, plug it in, and then plug your surge strip into it. It should show everything is kosher! All that hardware should be about $25.00.

 

[slycat]

Originally posted by: Ornery
Sheesh, you build computers, you can do it! Go to Ace hardware, and tell them you want to make an extension cord, using a weatherproof gang box. It uses special connectors, which they should have. Tell them you have to run an earth ground from a cold water line, and they'll sell you the length of wire you need, as well as the grounding clamp.

I assume the outlet you're plugging into has three conductors, which would be against code, but it is what it is. Anyway, tell the Ace hardware guy what you have, and that you need a heavy appliance cord to connect to your box. Sacrificing a cheap power strip may be cheaper than anything else, but see what he suggests. Run the ground and cord into the box and make the connections. Use a multimeter to double check everything. You absolutely MUST own a multimeter if you don't already, so now is the time to buy one. When you're done, plug it in, and then plug your surge strip into it. It should show everything is kosher! All that hardware should be about $25.00.

say i got all the stuff..erm..now u said ground means running a wire to a cold water pipe? ..so i cut the thick wire off a surge protector...plug it into the wall outlet...run the other ends into the gang box?...then also run the ground wire into the gang box...then plug my good surgeprotector into the thingiemagic...and plasmatv into the surgeprotector..sounds right?

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Ornery
A "checker" won't tell you shlt. Use a multimeter and check voltage from hot to ground, and neutral to ground. That's the only way to be sure.

How am I going to do that when there is no ground?

Connect one lead of the multimeter to some speaker wire and run like 75' of it ... into the kitchen to the cold water pipe? lol..

 

[Ornery]

First build it, then plug it in AFTER you're 100% sure it's correctly wired. You have to know ahead of time, which wires coming from his outlet are hot & neutral before you do anything. The ground wire from the sacrificed cord should probably not be connected inside your new gang box, since you don't know what's going on inside the landlord's outlet, although your preliminary checking with the multimeter should tell you that.

The only reason you're doing this at all, is because you don't want to fight with your landlord about it, or mess with his wiring. If it were me, I'd wire his box correctly, and run a ground to it inside the wall (with or without his permission!)

 

[Ornery]

...run like 75' of it ... into the kitchen to the cold water pipe? lol..

...or 50' to the bathroom, but that's EXACTLY what you do. Might as well buy a spool of 12ga. green electrician's wire and use that, because you could use it to start grounding those outlets while you're at it.

 

[DrPizza]

Hmmmm......
You rent the place... not worth it then to have it rewired at your expense.

2 things to consider that may be a helluva lot simpler: How long of a good quality (not a cheap 16 awg) extension cord would you need to reach a "good" outlet? If it's a short enough distance, go for it.
You can even make an extension cord, which seems like what they were talking about above. Go to an electrical supply store (maybe even home depot or something) Tell them your situation and that you want to make an extension cord to go the 20 feet or however long it is... they'll tell you what gauge wire you'll need (to avoid problems with the resistance in the wire). They'll want to know how much power you're using - add up the wattage of all the components you're using.

Also, except for possible worries about perhaps static electricity damaging components or something like that, the ground wire is just a feature to help you avoid electrocution on the slim chance that the hot wires in your appliance become grounded - if this is the case, then the ground wire will allow for a current which will trip the circuit breaker. Without the ground wire, contact with the metal exterior of whatever it is that's shorted *could* cause you to become the object which completes the circuit. If you're not grounded, it's not much of a problem, but if you're standing in a puddle of water or holding onto the sink faucet, you're gonna be dead. This doesn't happen too often. GFCI outlets help prevent this by comparing the current between the neutral and hot wires... if there's a difference, it trips the circuit. (the difference would mean that most likely current was coming through, but going somewhere else than the neutral wire)

For the most part, your wiring is safe even without a ground wire. Post and knob wiring was some of the safest wiring ever invented (if only they had believed in more than just taping things together at the time though)