We recently moved into a home we are renting. It’s an old house, and the majority of the outlets are 2 prongs. Our landlord bought the house about 10 years ago, and presumably had some updates done to the electrical, because there are a handful of newer looking 3 pronged outlets around the house. We’ve been here a month, and the all the outlets have worked fine for the most part (tripped the circuit breaker a couple times when running a vaccuum and dishwasher at the same time from the same room)
So here is the problem: the outlet where we need to put our computer, printer, modem, etc is 2 pronged, and about 15 feet from the nearest 3 prong. I looked up using an adapter and learned I needed to be sure the outlet box itself was grounded for it to be at all effective, so i got a cheap outlet tester, the kind with 3 led lights . I screwed in the adapter and plugged in the tester and it showed a “hot/ground reversed” error code, so i figured its not grounded, and the adapter is a no go. But then, out of curiosity i tested the 3 pronged outlets in the house and ALL of them came up either hot/ground reversed, or “open neutral”. So now it would seem there are no properly grounded 3 pronged outlets in the whole house, and I can’t safely use any of my computer equipment, which is vital for my job.
For what it’s worth, the landlord has been great so far, she is a single mother and a professor at the local university. She lived in the house and raised her kids there for several years before moving and renting it out, so she whatever rewiring she had done, she probably didn’t know it was done wrong.
What are my options? I know nothing about wiring. I cant drop thousands on an electrician, and I assume I can’t expect the landlord to do it for me. Am I just shit out of luck?
In addition to your other problems, I’ll bet that your local code (or NEC for that matter) requires the dishwasher to be on a dedicated circuit. In other words, you shouldn’t trip a breaker when you use the vacuum and the dishwasher at the same time.
As for how to fix it, that’s tough. Maybe talk to her about finding out what’s wrong with it. There’s a big difference in cost between having to have a handy man spend half a day there redoing some outlets that were installed wrong and having to have an electrician come in for 3 days and rewire the house. A few hundred or a few thousand dollars.
Also, make sure when you use those adapters A) the box has to be grounded AND B)(this is important) you screw that little tab into the faceplate. If you don’t do that, you’ve basically just cut the 3rd prong off.
The landlord is required to provide a safe rental property and those outlets are not safe; you could be killed under the right (wrong?) circumstances. Notify the landlord and see what she says. Be diplomatic. She may be grateful for your noticing as this could adversely affect her homeowners’s insurance–which BTW might give her some compensation for repairs.
By all means, be extremely careful with the outlets (and anything you may plug into them).
the 2 pronged receptacles would not work if the hot and ground were reversed. though an open (intermittent or poor) neutral might cause that reading through a three pronged adapter.
contact the landlord, say what you found and your concerns.
Hot/Ground reversed is OMG dangerous. Anything you plug in (with a three prong plug) that has a metal case (for example a desktop computer, a toaster, a George Foreman Grill) will give you a shock when you touch it. It also won’t turn on so you’ll probably touch it. Also, the little screw on the faceplate is hot.
Also, if you leave the ground open the outlet shouldn’t work.
Are you sure your outlet tester isworking. That’s a lot of problems to have and not have the previous homeowner say something or get them fixed.
Probably what happened is that someone replaced the ungrounded (2-prong) outlets with grounded, and only hooked the positive and negative, without hooking up a ground wire. This is pretty common. It’s an easy fix that looks right, and for the most part, works, because as long as the circuit breakers are functioning, you never have a problem. You could short out your equipment, though, and that’s more of a concern than electrical fires, but that doesn’t mean electrical fires couldn’t happen.
Your landlord is obligated in every state I have lived in to have properly grounded outlets. You are not responsible for this. It goes with being a landlord. She needs to get it done right away.
As for the dishwasher-- if it is installed, it should be on a dedicated circuit, but if you have a roll-away that plugs into a regular outlet, then you could have tripped the breaker. Find out how the house is wired to avoid this in the future. If it’s an installed dishwasher, somebody jerry-rigged it, and it needs to be transferred to its own line with its own breaker.
If I were renting from someone, I could probably live with that situation if the rent weren’t too high. It’s not hugely dangerous. However, with an outlet tester, it would come up as Open Ground. The OP is getting Open Neutral and Hot/Ground Reversed.
An Open Neutral means Neutral isn’t hooked up which would result in the outlet not working (do those outlets work?).
Hot/Ground reversed is just plan dangerous. I literally wouldn’t touch those outlets. I’m very, very comfortable working with electricity and I would NOT feel safe in that house. If someone swapped hot and ground, as I’ve said before, the little screw on the face plate will give you a shock. I think you’ll find that if you have an electrician come over, the first thing they’ll do is just hit the main breaker to knock out power to the entire house and open the outlet up to see what’s going on (and possibly the panel). No messing around here. It’s not worth running up and down the stairs 10 times trying to figure out which breaker it is and it’s not safe to take the faceplate off while it’s live…assuming hot and ground are actually reversed.
Again, I have to wonder if you outlet tester works property and if you’re using it correctly. I’m surprised a landlord would rent it out like that. Even if she didn’t know it was unsafe, but just with that many outlets not working.
Just to be clear, if your outlet tester says “open ground” the outlet shouldn’t be working. If it does, there’s something else going on.
the results you see would have no electricity in the two prong receptacles, it might be a deadly hazard in the three prong receptacles.
to have the whole place be that way is possible but not likely to be so without problems like fires and death happen previously.
you could call the landlord. explain what you did (not what you think). explain your concerns and that you would like (grounded receptacles in new locations). the landlord will want to get this straightened out.
Thanks for all the info everybody! I think I should get a better tester and test again, because the interesting thing is all of the outlets do work. And in the meantime, I’ll stop using the 3 pronged outlets.
From what I think I understand now, open neutral and hot/ground reversed outlets should not work properly?
All of the 3 pronged outlets I tested we have used for the last month without any issues- the vacuum in several of them, and a power strip, connected to an extension cord to one of them, has powered my computer and monitor without issue so far. I haven’t felt anything like a shock, though nothing has a metal frame. Also, the 2 pronged outlets all seem to work properly as well.
Meaningless side note- the cable guy had to go down to the basement to set it up, and actually commented that the breaker box and wiring looked new and well done for such an old house, which at least should hopefully indicate that there likely aren’t more widespread death-trap type issues going on house-wide.
Joey P mentioned the possibility that I might be using the tester incorrectly-- it’s just a little plug, with some led lights on it, and I plugged it into the socket and the lights indicted one of those 2 errors-- I tried multiple times around the house for each, and the codes were consistent for each socket. Is there a better, more accurate type of tester I should use, that’s not over, say 40 bucks?
Correct. An “open neutral” means that the neutral wire isn’t connected. If you look at a plug, you’ll see that the blades are two different sizes (sometimes). It would be like cutting off the bigger one, plugging it in and expecting it to work. That’s an open neutral. If your tester says ‘open neutral’ and things work, either A)your tester is broken B)you’re reading it wrong or C)There’s some other scenario going on that’s making it light up that way, possible related to the adapter you’re using
Hot/Neutral reversed would give you a shock, but WRT thing not working, the regular slots on the outlet would be getting 0 volts. Ignoring the shock hazard, nothing would be getting voltage. AB&C are the same as above.
Go to the hardware store and get one of those cheapo’neon testers’ or ‘two lead testers’. They’re only a few dollars.
Very easy to use (or misuse), but you can test each outlet in a few seconds.
The big/left slot to the round/bottom one=no light
The small/right slot to the round one=light
Left one to right one=light
On the two prong outlets you check to make sure an adapter will work either by plugging it in and doing the above test or by substituting the “round/bottom hole” for the screw on the face plate.
As usual there seems to be some wrong terminology being used here. In electrical code there is no such term as a ‘neutral.’ A regular outlet has a powered conductor, a grounded conductor, and a grounding conductor. A powered conductor is what most laymen refer to as a hot. A grounded conductor is what most laymen refer to as a neutral. A grounding conductor is often referred to as a ground.
If the tester is reading that the hot and and grounded conductor is reversed that means that the polarity is reversed. With AC current it’s a minor issue that should be corrected. For most purposes anything plugged into it would function normally. If the grounding conductor and the hot are reversed that is a much more severe problem and the outlet would not function normally. In addition any metal device plugged into it would be energized which could result in injury or death to anyone touching it.
I assume the issue is the prior.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask the landlord to have an electrician ensure all the devices are wired properly. I’d also ask the landlord to install GFCI’s in place of the 2 prong outlets for safety reasons. This would not offer the grounding you’d like for your equipment but it would make them safer to use.
If you would like the 2 prong outlets to be wired with grounding that would require new wires be run to the boxes. I can understand a landlord not wanting to pay that expense so if it’s important to you they be grounded you might want to offer to pay for it.
Bootis, could you take your tester somewhere with outlets you’d expect to be wired correctly, at your work, or at a newer public building, and see if your tester works correctly on them? Then try it with the adapter, and see if you get the same results as your house.
A)I’m going to bow out if you’re going to make this needlessly confusing. I know my way around electricity, but I’ve got no interest in trying to learn grounded vs grounding conductor. How about we stick with Hot, Ground and Neutral.
B)As of 2008 the NEC defined neutral as current carrying wire connected to a neutral point of the system. So, this is moot anyways.
You can stick to hot, neutral and ground but terminology is important if you are trying to define the problem, particularly with a tester that may be using the correct terminology.
Both a neutral and a ground are tied to ground. One is solely a direct path the the electrical panels ground while the other is a direct path in addition to being tied to any potential ground along the way.
If you are testing with a volt meter both will test as a path to ground. They however are not interchangeable.
Isn’t it amazing that I used a computer for 15 years on an ungrounded, 1918 circuit?
If I had a dollar for every pre-war house in this country with either no ground or ground-to-neutral (a quick-fix way to get a “ground”), I could buy a Senate seat somewhere.
