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This past week I purchased a condominium in which some of the receptacles were not groundedd. I asked an electrician to ground one of them because I wanted to put a room air conditioner on that receptacle. The receptacle in question was wired with surface wiring, and there must have been no means of grounding it with the existing wires. He attached an insulated green wire to the receptacle and grounded it to a screw on a steam or hot wataer radiator within the room. The outlet tests positive for ground now. Is this an acceptable practice? Thank you very much.
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No, using water pipes for the ground is not acceptable. The pipes need to be grounded, but not be the ground. The only exception that I know of is within the first 5 feet inside the building.
Good Luck, John.
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Ralph;
Curious as to the outcome of your conversation with the "electrician".
*An electrician who installs an outlet with surface wiring; and another electrician who grounds it with a mickey mouse wire. These people give contractors a bad name.Ralph, did you get an inspection report before buying this? Did it disclose ungrounded circuits? This is something you or your inspector should have caught before buying the place.The proper way is to open up the wall and snake some 12-2 Romex to the nearest box and ground the thing properly, Ralph. It may cost you $500 bucks but you own this place now.Relph
*Hi Ralph,I may get in hot water for giving you this advice, because by trade I'm a carpenter, not a electrician, but here goes:What your electrician should have done with the insulated green grounding wire, was to snake this back through the conduit to your breaker box and install it on the neutral bus bar inside your box. The other end is of course attached to your receptacle and pigtailed in to your receptacle's box (if a metal box).If the electrician was unable to snake this wire back through the existing conduit, then he could have rerouted this green wire any way possible (wall cavity, install another conduit, behind baseboard, etc.) that would have ultimately allowed this wire to again reach the designated breaker box and be wired into accordingly.If this was not feasible, then, like Scooter said, a rewire job is in order. BUT, and this is a big "but", 2 other things could be done: 1. Have the electrician remove the existing receptacle and install in its place a GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) receptacle. This receptacle is very sensitive to changes in electrical current and will "trip" off if a surge is detected. IT pretty much does the same thing as a ground wire does....prevents you from getting shocked. These receptacles can be wired up without a ground wire present and still do their job effectively. 2. (Here's where I get into the hot water) As I said earlier, your ground wire is always eventually routed back to your breaker box and attached to the neutral side bus bar. Well so is your Neutral Wire (normally the white wire). I'm sure this is probably in no way Code acceptable, but , you could attach your ground wire inside your receptacle box to both the receptacle, the box itself (if a metal box), and then pigtail it in with the Neutral wire. If the hot wire would come loose in this situation, the ground wire would pick up the current and send it back to the breaker box via the neutral wire, where it should trip out and keep you from getting shocked.I'm only mentioning this last method as a temporary last resort measure. This will work, and it will register the receptacle as being grounded; but like I said before, is "not up to code." However, I would prefer this method to the method currently used by your elctrician. Just grounding to a water pipe does not necessasarily keep you out of harms way. Depending on the water pipe's route, if you happen to come into contact with said pipe while standing on a basement floor or a concrete slab, it would be possible for you to become "grounded" and receive a shock if the wiring was faulty; especially if contact was made in the pipe's "middle of the run", before the pipe actually exited the building and reentered into the ground to its outside service line. Also....if your water meter is inside your dwelling, you may need a "jumper" line attached from your water line, over/or around past your meter and attached to the line where it stubs out of the building. This allows the water pipe an uninterrupted path to ground and will keep your meter from getting damaged.Ralph , I'm long winded, and for someone who is not a certified electrician, probably have said way too much already, so I'm going to end this by saying the best advice I can give you is to call in a certified electrician (other than the 1st guy you hired) and check him out for references first; and if the guy checks out, ask him for his opinion on what all needs to be done. If the guy checks out, he should be "up front" with you and will give you sound advice which (and this is important) will meet the local and State electrical codes for your region.Good luckDavo
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This past week I purchased a condominium in which some of the receptacles were not groundedd. I asked an electrician to ground one of them because I wanted to put a room air conditioner on that receptacle. The receptacle in question was wired with surface wiring, and there must have been no means of grounding it with the existing wires. He attached an insulated green wire to the receptacle and grounded it to a screw on a steam or hot wataer radiator within the room. The outlet tests positive for ground now. Is this an acceptable practice? Thank you very much.