Hello all,
I’m moving my microwave oven to a new position (in the pantry) to clear some kitchen space, but the new position’s wall power socket doesn’t have an earth connection like the old one did (i.e. a screw to connect the green wire).
Instead it has a LAN socket, a phone socket, and two cable TV sockets.
Can I safely attach the green earth wire to anything? or should I just put the microwave back where it was?
You have a pantry where you can connect a TV, computer, and (what the hell) a landline. My pantry has apples and peanut butter in it.
Point is, you sound like a rich guy so pay someone to figure it out. Just sayin’.
Open the existing receptacle up and see if there is a ground wire already in there. If that’s the case, just replace the receptacle with a grounded one and wire it up. Make sure you use a circuit tester to confirm that it’s behaving correctly.
If there’s no ground wire present, then there are exactly two correct solutions:
I find it hard to believe that any pantry that has a lan (rj45)/phone(rj11)/tv(coaxial) combo hookup would not already be grounded. And why the deuce are there TWO coaxials?
That said, I can’t think of a microwave made since 199x that wasn’t just a 3-prong plug (Read: Grounded plug).
Attaching a green Y-wire to a screw in a receptacle plate does not guarantee a ground, however. The only way to know for sure is to either buy a device that you plug into the socket to test, or do what friedo says and open it up and look for the white wire yourself.
Yeah, what you’ve got there is a media niche. While this is normally found in the living room or den, I suppose the d=builder or the previous owner might have upgraded the kitchen. An upscale media niche has connectors available for all of the devices commonly used by the various providers of television and internet service. Two coax outlets are nice if you want to route to a cable modem and a cable box or television – it eliminates the need for a splitter.
And agreed; while most internet and media appliances do not require grounded outlets, it would be bizarre to run all that cable through the walls, but not a ground wire.
It’s a small condo in Japan, so anything is possible. Is a ground wire really necessary?
For something with that much power, yes.
Possibly not, here it is legal to replace a 2 prong older type non grounded outlet with a GFCI 3 prong outlet and place a little sticky note on it saying ‘no equipment ground’. While the microwave won’t be grounded the GFCI protection should keep you and it safe. I don’t know what the rules are in Japan however.
Don’t try to get a ground off of any of that communications / Class 2 wiring. It can’t handle the power in the event of a fault in the appliance. If something ever does short out in the oven, you’ll end up with melted wiring, fried cable boxes or TVs, etc.
I am surprised that if someone took the effort to run phone (viva la landline!), cable and LAN, that they didn’t install or update a modern grounded power circuit. A DVD player, for example, may not need a ground, but a surge protector does.
If legal in your area, replacing the existing ungrounded outlet with a GFCI and labeling it “No Equipment Ground” would be the quickest way to get the job done.
ETA: the no equipment ground label needs to be permanent, so write it on the faceplate with a Sharpie marker. Sticky notes have a bad habit of falling off in three weeks or less.
The best solution would be to attach a real ground and a GFCI. A ground is almost always a good idea anyway, and there tends to be water around in a kitchen, making a GFCI a good idea too. If there’s already a ground wire in the box, then this is an easy DIY job, or, if you’re not confident in your DIY abilities, it’d be a minimal call for any real electrician. If there’s not a ground wire already there, it might be an impractical nuisance to install one, though.
Basically, what I’d do in your shoes would be to go buy a GFCI from Home Despot or whatever, then open up the plate, attach a ground wire if there is one, and if there isn’t one, then mark the GFCI with “no equipment ground”, as others have noted.
follow your local electrical codes in Japan.
in the USA i would replace the mains receptacle (if replaceable) with a grounded receptacle and attach a power grounding wire (not a signal ground for tv or anything else) to it. if no power grounding wire then replace it with a a GFI/RCD receptacle and mark it as being ungrounded.
In the U.S. it’s not required by the NEC, but it is generally accepted as good practice to install a dedicated outlet for the microwave in the kitchen. This is because microwaves tend to be high current devices and will often blow the breaker if they are on the same circuit as a lot of other things. I don’t know how they do things in Japan, but you can have problems similar to this if you move the microwave to a circuit that has a lot of other things on it.
Is there any safety issue with putting the microwave in an enclosed space?
Moderator Note
Lance Steele, a reply like this in General Questions is completely useless and constitutes threadshitting. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
How does this have anything to do with requiring a ground? A short that electrifies the case (if metal) in a 5 watt radio alarm clock is just as bad as a short in a 1.5 kW microwave. I have a 10 amp (1.2 kW, similar to a microwave) circular saw that only has a two-prong plug, although having a ground certainly increases safety when the case is metal (in some other cases, like computers, the ground also bypasses RF noise; some two-prong electronics, or those with the ground disconnected, will also give a (non hazardous) tingle if you touch them due to noise filtering capacitors connected from the line to isolated side).
Microwaves require active cooling, so you need to ensure that airflow isn’t obstructed; for example, these cabinet kits include vents. As for a pantry, that shouldn’t be a problem as long as there is enough space around the microwave and you don’t just turn it on and close it; even then, the room temperature probably wouldn’t get that warm (depending on the size).