Super ghetto house electrical repair

So long story short: My house has a circuit with a bad ground line. Stuff works fine on it but I know it's an accident waiting to happen. But, since nothing's on fire yet, my parents don't want all the hassle of breaking into the walls to fix it. I want to hook up a super grassroots HTPC I've been building and I don't want to risk it on there - I've had one computer blow a power supply on that circuit already.

So, assuming all the ground wires in the different plugs are wired together but just not plugged into the ground, if I get a plug from the hardware store and wire up the ground plug to a grounding wire that goes out a window or something, that should provide grounding for the whole circuit right? I'm pretty sure this will work but I'm not that familiar with AC electrical systems so I'm looking for a second opinion.

That does sound super ghetto. You want to send the wire out the window? What will you connect it to on the other end? Can you find the place on the outside of your house that everything else grounds to and hook it to that?

It sounds easier to run a completely new circuit inside the house--you don't need to bust up the walls. Just run new wiring into the walls and fish it through on the other end. Just don't forget to shut off the breaker first!

If it's just one circut that's affected I would just use a different circut for your PC.

Why do you need the ground? There are houses all over the country without ground wires in the wiring means,and they work just fine.The ground is just a secondary path to earth along with the white grounded wire. It is mearly a low resistance path to earth just like the white(neutral) wire,and not really needed under normal conditions. Old knob,and tube wiring had no ground,and it worked just fine. If you feel you have to have this ground then run a new cable from a good know ground through the basement if on the first floor,and you have an unfinished basement,or through the attic if on the second floor,and do it the right way. Or just run a GFCI with out the ground(not needed on a GFCI),and don't worry about a thing.

Chris

I could possibly hook it up to the main ground for the rest of the house, but that's 20ft. away and there's no tidy way to run it across the driveway. I was just gonna stick a rod into the garden and wire it to that

8 foot rod into the ground will work..

Mazdax605 wrote: Why do you need the ground? There are houses all over the country without ground wires in the wiring means,and they work just fine.The ground is just a secondary path to earth along with the white grounded wire. It is mearly a low resistance path to earth just like the white(neutral) wire,and not really needed under normal conditions. Old knob,and tube wiring had no ground,and it worked just fine. If you feel you have to have this ground then run a new cable from a good know ground through the basement if on the first floor,and you have an unfinished basement,or through the attic if on the second floor,and do it the right way. Or just run a GFCI with out the ground(not needed on a GFCI),and don't worry about a thing. Chris

Whoa, that's really bad advice, and VERY wrong. You are offering recipes for electrocution.

A properly grounded system is essential to individual safety, property protection, and proper functioning of electronic equipment.

True, there are still a lot of ungrounded systems. That doesn't make them OK.

And GFCI stands for "ground fault interrupter circuit". That means that a properly installed GFCI will monitor the proper grounding of the circuit, and cut the power if there is no ground. Exactly the opposite of what you said.

This isn't right:

GameboyRMH wrote: So, assuming all the ground wires in the different plugs are wired together but just not plugged into the ground, if I get a plug from the hardware store and wire up the ground plug to a grounding wire that goes out a window or something, that should provide grounding for the whole circuit right? I'm pretty sure this will work but I'm not that familiar with AC electrical systems so I'm looking for a second opinion.

But this is:

mad_machine said: 8 foot rod into the ground will work..

However, I'm gonna recommend you stay away from electrical work. No offense, it would just be a good idea. Find a friend who understands electrical, and get a little help.

agreed... electrical work is the one place where the chances of failure are high and fairly painful. As a stage Electrician, I am not certified to work on home electrics.. but i know enough to be VERY respectful of electricity.

It probably does not help that when I deal with electricity it is in three phase and often involves a hundred thousand or more watts of light. Usually when me hanging above the stage at about 40 feet

Mazdax605 wrote: Why do you need the ground? Chris

Because it will overload the neutral, which is a bad thing... For example, when the heat kicks on, the lights will dim, when the refrigerator kicks on, the lights will dim, this is a sure sign of an overloaded neutral. If you get the oppisite, then the neutral connection in the meter base is corroded, and the meter base should be replaced...

If you get the oppisite, then the neutral connection in the meter base is corroded,

Or you have a load imbalance.

canzus wrote: Because it will overload the neutral, which is a bad thing... For example, when the heat kicks on, the lights will dim, when the refrigerator kicks on, the lights will dim, this is a sure sign of an overloaded neutral.

THis happens quite frequently in our old house when the 220 window unit kicks on. We have old wiring in sections of our house that is just a hot and a neutral and no ground. We want to update the wiring but it will be very difficult due to the fact that when they added wiring to the house in the '50s, they ran the wiring along the outside of the house and then put on a brick veneer. The wiring is not inside a studded wall or even inside of conduit.

Is the overloaded neutral just a sympton of the non-grounded wiring we have or is there a connection issue that we could track down and potentially repair that will address the neutral's overload? Or do we have too much crap on that circuit(s) and that's the overload issue?

We just recently replaced a cable in the interior section of the house because when we turned on the TV (which includes the receiver, cable DVR and the TV all at once), two of the outlets in the house just spontaneously quit working. We pulled the wire to that TV outlet and discovered the open hot was due to a join that was inside the wall that was merely taped together, not even a wire nut in site. I am really glad we found that one before it caused something a lot worse than the TV not coming on.

SVreX wrote: This isn't right:

GameboyRMH wrote: So, assuming all the ground wires in the different plugs are wired together but just not plugged into the ground, if I get a plug from the hardware store and wire up the ground plug to a grounding wire that goes out a window or something, that should provide grounding for the whole circuit right? I'm pretty sure this will work but I'm not that familiar with AC electrical systems so I'm looking for a second opinion.

But this is:

mad_machine said: 8 foot rod into the ground will work..

However, I'm gonna recommend you stay away from electrical work. No offense, it would just be a good idea. Find a friend who understands electrical, and get a little help.

Agreed.

Sort of...

The problem with adding another rod is you've now double-grounded your electrical system... which is not a good idea or code compliant (can create ground loops).

Are there ways around this if you know what you're doing? Yes. But it varies too much on the exact situation and I design this stuff for a living so there's no way in hell I'm going to post it. Sorry.

Work harder on convincing your parents to get it fixed properly.

mad_machine wrote: agreed... electrical work is the one place where the chances of failure are high and fairly painful.

Only for a few seconds

just one thing to remember.. electricity is a lot like water. While t will not run downhill, you can follow the voltage flow exactly like you can plumbing

Sounds like to me like you have an accident waiting to happen. It probably doesn't sound practical to fish new wiring through the walls, and pulling the wall boards down may reveal all kinds of new problems. However, if you ever plan on selling that house, you are going to need to fix the problem or sell it at discount because of it. There are a lot of old structures in the northeast with retrofit wiring. Much can be done on the surface of walls hidden behind decorative moldings. It might be the most cost effective solution for your house. It might be worth it to start redoing it, one circuit at a time until all the old stuff is out of service. I bought a house with some wiring nightmares, and it is never fun when you find a new item in need of attention.

I have a 50s-era house that was originally built without grounds. At some point (fairly recently) someone came in and ran ground wires to the outlets. I haven't traced them out, but I believe they all go from the wall outlets down to the basement, and then on to an 8-foot spike as mentioned above.

Anyway, it doesn't look that difficult to do, FOR A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, assuming your house has a basement or crawlspace, and you don't have some weirdness like ECM. Just get someone to come in and take care of it. Electricity is not to be fooled with if you don't know what you're doing.

Tim Baxter wrote: ... and you don't have some weirdness like ECM...

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Yeah, I know my house has problems and I want very much for a qualified electrician to come out and tell me just how awful it is so I will never be able to sleep again.

Wanna hear even more weirdness? We have a circuit breaker box AND a fuse box. The fuse box is what powers the old wiring that has no ground. None of the individual circuit breakers kill power to that fuse box, but the main at the top of the breaker panel does. The fuse box has a main that you pull out that is made of what looks like bakelite and has two shotgun shell looking fuses inside. One day I cam home and half the power was mysteriously out in the house and no breakers were blown. A quick look in the fuse panel showed blueing of one of the terminals on that main and some of the bakelite had melted from the arcing. That was a close one and the fuse didn't even "blow". Still not sure what caused it.

I keep lobbying for an electrician but so far I have been unable to talk Chuck into it.

Talk Chuck into it. It beats the hell out of having your house burn down.

I'm lucky, I know an electrician or two.

The more I read up on the mess I have the more I think I am just going to call the electrician over while Chuck is out.

I just Googled the fuse panel for the hell of it. It is a 'Federal No Ark' , apparently it is called a "main, range and four". According to the never-failing interwebs, some insurance companies are dropping service to people that still have them. Whoo-boy. I ain't gonna sleep tonight.

It looks like this one, except you can hardly see it because it is in the back of a kitchen cabinet.

I have nothing to add (as usual) aside from: get an electrician.

I'm planning to replace sockets in my house, for the mere reason that they have 20 years worth of paint on them, and I HATE that. I'm nervous about electricity when the breakers are off. I'll work on cars/bikes all day long - 12v is just enough to get your attention; 110 or 220 will do more then give you a little jolt.

Remember: electricity is invisible and can kill you. Treat it appropriately.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that gets up tight about working on electrical stuff. I only do basic stuff, but it scares the hell out of me while I do it. My wife wonders why I get cranky, perhaps its because she decides its a good time for flash photography of the project when I'm playing with the wires.

sachilles wrote: My wife wonders why I get cranky, perhaps its because she decides its a good time for flash photography of the project when I'm playing with the wires.

Ha! Yeah, I can see how that would make you jumpy. That's like working on a bomb-diffusing crew and popping an inflated paper lunchbag.

yeah... when it comes to electricity, I'm a classic case of "do what I say, not what I do..." I've done a lot of electrical work that I won't mention here... but I'm also not searching on the internet before hand. I already know exactly what I'm going to be doing before I run a single wire...

So in a nutshell... if you're on the internet asking about what you should do - hire an electrician...

HA! I think bubble wrap would also be quite fun to have around while electrical work is being performed.