However, when I take the plate off and look inside the outlet circuit box, everything seems fine. The copper wire is attached/wrapped around the green screw on the outlet. It is also wrapped around a screw in the back of the circuit box.
It appears to be grounded just fine.
Also, when I use a different electrical tester, I get an odd result. I used one of those ones that are long like a tooth brush, with a plastic tip that you put into the outlet. If it has power, it lights up. Thing is, when this outlet is active, the tester lights up about 1/2 inch away from the outlet.
What is going on with this thing? Anyway to fix it without calling an electrician?
The non-contact tester is going to be useless here. What you need to double check is a regular voltage tester. You can get one like this for just a couple of dollars.
The problem is most likely that the box isn’t grounded. A voltage tester will likely show 120 hot to neutral but 0 hot to ground. You should get 120 hot to ground. Open the box, take your voltage tester and check hot to the box, you should get 120, if you get 0, the box isn’t grounded.
So, here we go:
If you get 120 from hot to the box, then check hot to the green screw on the outlet, if it’s zero, there’s just a bad connection somewhere that needs to be tightened, no biggie.
If you get 120 from hot to the box AND 120 from hot to the screw, it’s a bad outlet…change the outlet.
If you get 0 from hot to the box, the box isn’t grounded (this is the first thing you should check to rule it out). If the box isn’t grounded it could be a few things and it’s going to depend on how your house is wired. If your house is wired with romex (3 wires inside plastic sheathing) it’s probably just a bad ground connection somewhere along the line. Either in that box or somewhere between it and the breaker box and it’s just a matter of finding it. You can do it, we can help…an electrician can do it faster.
If you house is wired with BX (2 wires inside metal sheathing, looks like this or metal conduit (pipe), then the metal itself is used as the ground between boxes and if you have good grounds at other outlets on the same circuit, (at least downstream), I’d guess that the conduit or BX came free from one of the boxes. How difficult that’s going to be to fix is hard to say without seeing it. Again, you can probably do it, but an electrician can probably do it faster.
I’d say at this point, you can do some poking around and give us some results if you want but you’re going to have to get regular voltage tester or multimeter. The outlet tester will be of limited help to test see if downstream or upstream outlets have similar problems and the non-contact tester will be useless for this problem.
Also, I always like to tell people that a non-contact tester will sorta kinda work to tell you when there IS power, but never ever trust it to tell you when there isn’t power. They give a lot of false readings and I would never touch a wire because one of those things said it was dead. They are handy in some applications (I have one), but this isn’t one of them since they test for the presence of voltage and not voltage across two specific points.
Now that I think about it, if you do get a voltage tester, you might want to double check the outlet tester before you before you spend too much time troubleshooting everything under the sun…might as well make sure it’s reading everything right. One prong in right/small slot, one prong in the bottom hole, nothing should happen = Open Ground.
Joey, would pictures of the inside help? I mean, if I take out the outlet and photograph the interior(while the outlet is still hooked up), is that useful?
Not unless they would help you. I know what it looks like and you said everything appears to be hooked up. If you want to upload pictures, I can tell you want to test and what the results mean. But you’re going to need a regular two prong cheapo voltage tester.
the grounding wire can looked connected yet not be electrically functioning due to not being connected at the other end or being broken or corroded somewhere in the path.
the noncontact voltage tester (like a tooth brush) will sense electricity at about 1/2 inch. this shows you have electricity, it says nothing about if you have a ground or not.
the 3-Prong Outlet Testers is a very safe and good testing device. it will lead you to what check further if there is a problem. you use this on some other receptacles to see that it is functioning (you should get ground connections elsewhere or this tester is broken or you have more bad wiring).
finding what is causing there to be no ground will take some skill and careful testing. there are some situations to test which can be hazardous and where the repair has to be done with caution.
