"None of these houses are grounded." - ehhh?

Factual Questions
1

I had cause to replace my UPS recently. I hadn’t noticed that there’s a little “site wiring fault” light on the back of these things. It was on, and I presume has always been on. It comes on when I plug the unit into any outlet in the house, and supposedly means either the hot and neutral sides switched on the outlet, or a bad ground. I’m presuming the latter, since it happens on every outlet. The manual also says the UPS won’t work properly unless you fix it. Well, OK.

Now, I happened to mention this to my neighbor, and he made the statement I titled this post with, namely, none of the houses in this neighborhood are grounded. I was figuring it probably was, and had come ungrounded, perhaps when old galvanized pipe was taken out for a copper repipe, and a ground-to-plumbing got disconnected. I think this place is about 40 years old. Did construction codes allow ungrounded electrical that recently? The sockets are a mix of 3 prong and two prong with the wider prong on one side. The 3 prong ones at least seem to have a grounding wire going somewhere.

The next question would be, how bad is running the UPS this way? I’m presuming the danger is concerning the surge protection feature, not the battery backup. And how much hassle is it going to be to fix it?

2

Very common for old houses to not have be grounded. No code violation exists until you start replacing stuff, like outlets. IIRC once you lay your hand to something in that way, you have to bring that part of the work up to code.

The fix is simple in concept: If you dont want to run new 3-wire romex from the outlet to the panel you can run an independent third wire from the oultlet to the neutral bus on the panel (don’t run it to a pipe for reasons you’ve already addressed). How exactly you get that done is up to you and depends almost entirely on logistics. I’ve grounded an entire house, one circuit at a time, sucessfully using an independent ground wire. Did it get the job done? Yes. Is it safe and reasonably bulletproof? Yes. Would it pass inspection? I have no idea, but they can’t gig you if they can’t see the work*!

It involved removing the baseboards and running the new wire along the floor and then up the wall into the outlet, then back down again to either the next outlet or the long haul to the panel. LOADS of fun.

Enjoy. I am not a professional electrician. (duh!)

*Breathtakingly irresponsible attitude.

3

Just what is the “UPS” you mention. Do you mean Ground Faul Interrupter, GFI, receptacle? Or are you aksing about a receptacle testing device you plug into receptacle to confirm correct wiring or faulty wiring, missing ground wire, etc.
Do you have NEMA three prong outlets, with hot, neutral, and ‘U’ shaped ground openings. You mentioned a red light on back side of a tester(?) which would indicate the receptacles are upside down.
There should be a ground rod near the entrance box and a bare #8 or so bare copper wire bolted to the ground bus in the breaker box. In some areas the power company’s grounded messenger wire is substituted. In any event you must have a ground, neutral, and hot wire connected in the breaker box.
Maybe you need a licensed electrician to sort it all out for you.
PS A UPS is an Uninterrruptible Power Supply.

4

Inigo ,

Sorry I don’t follow, how did you ground your ground wire? Are you saying you connected it to the neutral bus in the breaker box?

To the op, electricity is a confusing thing. In a 110/220 typical wiring in the US the black wire is “hot” the white is “neutral” green or bare is “ground”. Ask any electrician and he wil tell you wire color means nothing. I have been zapped by more ground wires than “hot” wires. One simple miswiring anywhere in the house can energise a " neutral" or a ground.

If this intimidates you, then stop. Call an electrician. If you follow, then it is relativly easy to ground a single outlet. A little more trouble to ground an entire house.

First off obtain a ground rod. This is a six foot copper or copper clad rod you will drive into the ground.

Then you will need to replace old outlets. thankfully thay cost about a buck each, a little more if you get heavy wattage ones.

Inego’s idea of running the ground behind the base boards is a good one. It is most likely legal as well but check code first.

If there is drywall grind a channel to the base board run then mud and tape over it after your wire is in.

Install the new outlets, tye in the grounds remember, all connections need to be made in a box. Use only unbroken runs of insulated wire outside them.

Continue until you reach the breaker. Take a length of 8 guage wire or better and tye it to the LEFT neutral bus. Run it (in conduit) to your gold rod. Clamp it in place.

Rewire your breaker box so all ground connections are on the left neutral bus and all neutral connections are on the right. (I’ve seen this order reversed it, really doesnt matter) Make it neat.

That does it, The entire house is now three prong standard, please tell me I don’t need to tell you to throw the main breaker AND test the main bus with a circuit tester before doing any of this.

5

Or, as the data center where I worked for many years noted after being ordered to buy the Serial # 00001 UPS from a sister division that had suddenly decided to get into the business, Unpredictable Power Supply.

6

Which is precisely what I mean. It has an LED on the back panel labeled “SWF”, documented to mean “site wiring fault”. It is on. To be precise, it is one of these:

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=76&pcount=&Product_Id=123024

The one it replaced had a similar light on it, and I’m guessing that it’s been sitting there on for a few years.

7

The primary grounding electrode would be the water supply piping, assuming municipal water service, and the point of connection to the service panelboard must be within 5 feet of where the piping enters the building. 250.52 (A)(1). Additionally, rod and pipe electrodes shall be not less than 8 feet in length, with diameters dictated by their metallic composition. 250.52 (A)(5) The sizing of grounding electrode conductors is dictated by the size of service, e.g. 100 amp, 150 amp, and so forth. See table 250.66

The issue of slotting drywall to install a grounding conductor is not compliant IMHO based on 250.120 ©: Equipment grounding conductors smaller than 6 AWG shall be protected from physical damage by a raceway or cable armor except where run in hollow spaces of walls or partitions, where not subject to physical damage, or where protected from physical damage.

Levittown, PA homes were built with 2 wire branch cable and a separate aluminum conductor which daisy chained from metallic box to box. That conductor was within the hollow space of the wall mentioned above, not put into a slot in the drywall.

All references 2002 National Electrical Code

8

Love ya DWC.

EG quote.
“If there is drywall grind a channel to the base board run then mud and tape over it after your wire is in.”

This is wrong then.

What you need to do is, set you skill saw at 1/2" depth and cut 2 lines at the height of the outlet boxes. Tear out the drywall and drill 9/18" holes in the studs.

Pull 12 or 14 gauge wire through the holes and stub them out in the outlet boxes. Repair the drywall w/ sheetrock strips cut to size then mud and tape.

9

Heh, or you could drill 1/2" holes doesn’t matter to me.

10

What do you people mean by ‘mud’?

11
      • I am not certain–but I am pretty sure that ‘mud’ is basically “drywall plaster”. They don’t call it “plaster” because techinically"plaster" really is something else. Something similar, but not quite the same.
        …
  • I lived in an 8-unit apartment building once and during a storm, the TV antenna on the side of the building opposite the one my apartment was in got struck by lightning. Anything electronic plugged in in any of the four apartments on that side got burned out/destroyed, and the landlord had to replace them. Upon inspection of the electrical system, it was found that neither side had been grounded properly, but there were two complete systems for the two halves of the building (this was because there was a solid firewall in the center of the building, that no plumbing, electrical lines or other holes were allowed to be run through).
    ~
12

It’s referred to as “mud” because if you call it “joint compund” people get the wrong idea. Hardware store people will know what you’re talking about with either term, they’re just brilliant that way.

When I ran my ground, I used a single strand of 12 guage wire (green insulation). Once the baseboard was off I used a utility knife to cut a hole in the drywall–high enough to get above the 2x4 framing and low enough to keep the work covered by the baseboards. I then fished the wire up the hole and into the box–took about 10 minutes per outlet…and a LOT of Fosters! This technique eliminated the need for drywall repair.

And yes, I connected it to the neutral bus at the main panel to complete the grounding.

13

Running ground wires to each outlet may be the best solution, but it’s also a pain in the ass. A much easier solution is to ensure each outlet is GFI protected. Our previous house was ungrounded, and I was able to protect almost all the home’s 120 VAC receptacles (about 25 of them) by replacing just 7 receptacles with $8 GFI receptacles.

After installing the 7 GFI receptacles, I replaced all the old 2-prong receptacles with new 3-prong receptacles, and labeled each faceplate accordingly…

14

[blatant hijack]The title is “None of these house are ground.” The word ‘none’ stands for ‘not one’ and the verb should agree in number with that and should be the singular ‘is.’ I wrote to L A Times columnist Jack Smith about this and he agreed.

But he went on to say that the Times’ stylebook called for ‘are’ and that’s what the editor would put in the final draft. He also said that most other publishers’ stylebooks said the same thing.

So I can grumble all I want. People, including respected publishers, will write “None of the horses are shod.” Nuts. Who says that the majority opinion doesn’t make things right?[/blatant hijack.

15

Yes, we own a farm and the house was built about 30 years ago and it didn’t have grounded outlets.
I have since installed ground wires to all critical outlets like in the kitchen and baths, this is no easy job. Also added GFI protection for these circuits.

As for your UPS, all your UPS warranty is void unless it’s used with a property grounded system.

16

Did I understand you didn’t run ground wires to your ungrounded outlets?

I wasn’t aware that a GFI would function without a ground?

17

Yes, they will. If there is no ground present, such outlets (as well as any connected downstream from them) must carry the label, “No Equipment Ground”. Contrary to common belief, GFCIs do not monitor the ground for current, nor do they care if a ground is even present. They work by comparing the current “in” through the hot wire to the current “out” through the neutral, using a differential current transformer. If the imbalance exceeds about 5 mA, the GFCI will trip, de-engerzing the circuit.

18

That’s why it’s a ground fault. If the hot and neutral aren’t balanced, the balance must be going to ground. Not a good thing, since you’re a likely path to ground.

19

New houses in the UK often don’t have earths. This system is called PME standing for ‘protective multiple earthing’ - one of the stupidest misnamings ever invented.

I should explain for foreigners that almost all power outlets in the UK are three pin. There is a live wire at 230V AC, a neutral to complete the circuit, and an earth for safety reasons. The traditional way these have worked is that the neutral and live are supplied into the house by the electricity company, and the earth was obtained by connecting to a water mains pipe, or ground stake.

With the advent of plastic water pipes, this has become increasingly problematic, hence this new ‘PME’ idea. Now, the neutral and live come into the house as before, and at the point where they enter the house, a connection is made to the neutral wire, and that becomes the earth for the whole building.

In normal operation, there is no problem, and earth leakage protection devices work as normal. Under normal conditions no current flows in the earth wire, and the live and neutral currents are balanced. All the earths inside the house are at the same potential - this includes any metal radiators, taps etc., which the building codes require to be connected to the wiring earth.

There is a problem though when you take a portable appliance outside the house. Now you might be holding an electric drill, the chassis of which is connected to your house earth, which is actually at the potential of the neutral of the incoming supply. But you are standing on actual ground - you might even be standing in a puddle, or leaning against a metal fence. See the problem?

Of course, the neutral should be pretty close to real ground anyway, but if one of the neighbors shorts something out inside their house, then for a short time, till the fuses blow, hundreds of amps flow in the neutral return and this can raise its voltage to something dangerous, say 50 volts or more.

The worst situation is when the neutral wire becomes severed before it returns to the local sub-station, say when some workmen accidentally cut through the cable. Now all the appliances and radiators, taps etc., in your home become live. As long as you stay inside the house, you are fine, but if you happen to be using an electric tool outdoors at the time, it might be the last thing you ever do!

20

There’s a point we need to make sure is correctly defined. Citing Levittown, as I did above, even though the duplex receptacles lacked a third opening for a grounding prong, the receptacles were still considered to be grounded. I’ll grant you, it wasn’t necessarily a good ground, because the grounding conductor which started at the panelboard was landed on the device box only.

If you took out the center screw of the duplex cover plate, inserted a 3 prong to 2 prong adaptor, and reinstalled the screw through the green metallic tab at the middle of the adaptor, your grounding path was from the appliance prong, to the center of the duplex body device strap, from there to the top and bottom machine screws which secured the duplex to the device box, and then back to the panelboard.

If you’re in a structure where the device boxes are grounded as I’ve described, you can remove the old two prong duplex receptacles, install a green grounding pigtail from the back of the device box (one or more holes there can be tapped to accept the machine screw) to the grounding screw terminal on the duplex receptacle, and you will have greatly improved the quality of the ground.

The little neon or LED plug-in testers only indicate sufficient current flow to illuminate the indicator, not necessarily a low enough impedance to clear a ground fault, or protect sensitive equipment.

References: 250.130 (C) (Also see 406.3(D) regarding the post by Crafter_Man) and 250.146 National Electrical Code 2002 Edition.