Good place for an electrical outlet?

[SarcasticDwarf]

The house I am renting has a few oddly placed electrical outlets. My favorite is this one. The bathroom was remodeled six years ago, yet they decided to leave that outlet there (and active!).

Edit: Two more from outside

 

[zerocool84]

Why is that odd? Perfect place for a TV.

 

[FoBoT]

hope it is protected by GFCI

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

hope it is protected by GFCI

There's not a single gfci outlet in the house. In fact, very few of the outlets are grounded (~1/3).

I will have to take some pics of the outside outlets tomorrow. Think of completely unprotected indoor outlets being used outside ~6 inches off the ground.

 

[twinrider1]

I see nothing wrong with the outlet. Why is there a toilet in your kitchen?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Haha that's awesome. Get a light bulb socket with two wires, stick a wire in ground and one in hot, if it turns on, it's not GFCI protected and you should probably change it. If it never turns on then you tripped some random GFCI somewhere, happy hunting. (may be a GFCI breaker too)

Since the wiring is there may as well keep it, just make sure it's GFCI protected. Could always come in handy to charge something I suppose. Could also put in a glade plugin to help kill the evil smells that will be generated in front of it.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Haha that's awesome. Get a light bulb socket with two wires, stick a wire in ground and one in hot, if it turns on, it's not GFCI protected and you should probably change it. If it never turns on then you tripped some random GFCI somewhere, happy hunting. (may be a GFCI breaker too)

Since the wiring is there may as well keep it, just make sure it's GFCI protected. Could always come in handy to charge something I suppose. Could also put in a glade plugin to help kill the evil smells that will be generated in front of it.

I went around and tested everything. Unless there is a GFCI outlet hidden behind a wall there is no GFCI anywhere in the house. Not in the kitchen, bathrooms, or anywhere else. The circuit breaker itself is nothing special. Only 1/3 bedrooms and one wall of the dining room have outlets that are grounded at all.

 

[Rubycon]

That's convenient for one of those bidet toilet seats. :biggrin:

That outlet should be replaced with a GFCI outlet and a cover added suitable for wet locations as well.

 

[IronWing]

Aim true my friend, aim true.

 

[Eli]

Aim true my friend, aim true.

 

[RossMAN]

Aim true my friend, aim true.

LOL :thumbsup:

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Aim true my friend, aim true.

*makes an emergency Home Depot trip*

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Old houses are hilarious like that. House I lived in for most of my college career was a 100+ year old boarding house. The electrical outlet arrangement wasn't too crazy, but the way the circuits were wired was insane. 2 100A feeds from the grid, each with its own circuit panel. From there, absolute madness.

Three 2nd floor rooms, one on the opposite sides of the house from the other two, share a 15A circuit with each other AND a room on the 3rd floor (which is not directly on top of or near the other 2 rooms). This circuit is constantly being tripped by peoples computers/heaters. Guys run beefy extension cords to other circuits in the house.

One 2nd floor room has 2 20A circuits that it shares with no other rooms in the house. Thankfully I lived there and stored all my bitcoin rigs in there back when I was mining

There are a few other circuits that boggle my mind, zig-zaging throughout the three story house connecting multiple rooms up and down floors and across hallways. Then there are the few rooms with their own circuits. Thankfully all the outlets are grounded (They are three pronged plugs, never used an outlet tester on them.. so the ground plugs could just be for show..)

Old house and electrical wiring = lol

With those lols comes some terror though. At one point one of the sub panels went horribly awry and created a ground loop. The panel box got super hot and wires started melting. It also caused weird things like turning a switch on in one room turned someones lights on/off. The electrician was at our house for hours reverse engineering the mess that was that panel.

Old house and electrical wiring =

 

[waggy]

hey you are set up for the computerized toilet seat!


awesome!

 

[TheSlamma]

That is just begging for some powerdump jokes

 

[Red Squirrel]

lol a remote control for a toilet seat, now that's awesome. I would just leave that by the TV. Friends over. "What's that?" *presses button, someone is in bathroom* "Ahhhhh!!!"

 

[FallenHero]

Old houses are hilarious like that. House I lived in for most of my college career was a 100+ year old boarding house. The electrical outlet arrangement wasn't too crazy, but the way the circuits were wired was insane. 2 100A feeds from the grid, each with its own circuit panel. From there, absolute madness.

Three 2nd floor rooms, one on the opposite sides of the house from the other two, share a 15A circuit with each other AND a room on the 3rd floor (which is not directly on top of or near the other 2 rooms). This circuit is constantly being tripped by peoples computers/heaters. Guys run beefy extension cords to other circuits in the house.

One 2nd floor room has 2 20A circuits that it shares with no other rooms in the house. Thankfully I lived there and stored all my bitcoin rigs in there back when I was mining

There are a few other circuits that boggle my mind, zig-zaging throughout the three story house connecting multiple rooms up and down floors and across hallways. Then there are the few rooms with their own circuits. Thankfully all the outlets are grounded (They are three pronged plugs, never used an outlet tester on them.. so the ground plugs could just be for show..)

Old house and electrical wiring = lol

With those lols comes some terror though. At one point one of the sub panels went horribly awry and created a ground loop. The panel box got super hot and wires started melting. It also caused weird things like turning a switch on in one room turned someones lights on/off. The electrician was at our house for hours reverse engineering the mess that was that panel.

Old house and electrical wiring =

The house doesn't even have to be super old to have that craziness. My parents house has a combination of circuit breakers and a fuse box with their 100 amp service. The wiring is insane just around there. At one point the kitchen light stopped working, so my dad was going around trying to find out the source of the problem. He ended up opening up a small box in the basement and saw two wires which were clearly never ever connected. Connected them and suddenly the light started working again. We have no idea how it was working in the first place for over 15 years without a problem.

 

[DrPizza]

Depending on the jurisdiction, if they updated the electric in the bathroom when they did the bathroom renovation, it's possible that during an electrical inspection, the whole house would have had to have been brought up to current electrical code. Thus, leaving the electric as is would have avoided opening a can of worms.

Also, it depends on the extent to which the renovation was done. If the wiring to that outlet came from "somewhere else" - you can't just cut the wires inside the wall and cap them. That's against electrical codes. Thus, what are you going to do with that line that runs to the bathroom to that outlet? You could figure out where the line comes from, which in older houses, could conceivably be halfway across the house (I've seen plenty of idiotic things like that.) Or, you can just say "fuck it" and leave the outlet there. AFAIK, there's no code that says you MUST bring the electric to current electrical code, which would include GFI outlets in the bathroom, though it's possible there are other rules that say if you're going to rent the place out that you have to bring those areas up to code. Regardless, you can get a 3 pack of GFI outlets for about $25 and change them out in 15 minutes to make yourself feel (and be) a little bit safer in the bathroom should, say, you decide to blow dry your hair while standing in the shower, or use a curling iron in an unnatural way while sitting on the toilet. (/bad attempt at humor)

 

[DrPizza]

The house doesn't even have to be super old to have that craziness. My parents house has a combination of circuit breakers and a fuse box with their 100 amp service. The wiring is insane just around there. At one point the kitchen light stopped working, so my dad was going around trying to find out the source of the problem. He ended up opening up a small box in the basement and saw two wires which were clearly never ever connected. Connected them and suddenly the light started working again. We have no idea how it was working in the first place for over 15 years without a problem.

It's scary to think what that wiring might look like.

 

[FallenHero]

It's scary to think what that wiring might look like.

Yeah, my dad is frightened just thinking about it. One of his friends does general contract work and estimated it would cost at least 10 grand to re-wire the house and bring it up to code.

Whats worse is when he has gone in to do new work, he finds that most of the wiring used is aluminum that has corroded inside insulation. At this point he's at the point of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" because anything he touches will require vast amounts of work.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

I just added two more from the outside. Look real closely at the last pic. No, I have no idea what it goes to.

 

[Zstream]

Yeah, my dad is frightened just thinking about it. One of his friends does general contract work and estimated it would cost at least 10 grand to re-wire the house and bring it up to code.

Whats worse is when he has gone in to do new work, he finds that most of the wiring used is aluminum that has corroded inside insulation. At this point he's at the point of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" because anything he touches will require vast amounts of work.

Not only that, he has to bring the stuff he messes with up to code. Bringing one piece up to code could be a potential disaster as the wire could go everywhere (tree branch style).

 

[Red Squirrel]

Speaking of weird electrical, there's a plug in my office with one black (hot) and 2 whites. If I disconnect one of the whites, the kitchen lights stop working, they're on another circuit. I think they stole the neutral from there for whatever reason so one of those wires is the neutral for that plug while the other is going to the kitchen. Really weird.

I should probably just stick those two circuits on a double pole breaker. I don't get why they'd take a neutral from another outlet though, this is not knob and tube, it's old style romex, so it has two conductors and a ground. Guess the neutral got cut at one point so they just ran another from the nearest outlet.

 

[JEDI]

I went around and tested everything. Unless there is a GFCI outlet hidden behind a wall there is no GFCI anywhere in the house. Not in the kitchen, bathrooms, or anywhere else. The circuit breaker itself is nothing special. Only 1/3 bedrooms and one wall of the dining room have outlets that are grounded at all.

thats weird. it's usually all or none.

why did they stop grounding the rest of the outlets in the house?

or why did they start grounding some of the outlets in the house?

 

[JEDI]

Aim true my friend, aim true.

hm.. what happens if u pee on a live outlet?