Grounding prong broken off in electrical outlet
In my house, none of the outlets are grounded, although they are all three
prong. I discovered an outlet which appears to have a grounding prong broken
off in it. I can't tell for sure. All I know is I can't plug in any
three-prong plug.
Is it safe to try to just yank the prong out with pliers?
Or should I just install one of those plug adapters, which convert 3-prong
to 2-prong??
The problem is, there is no way for me to remove the box, since I can never
be certain if I have turned off power to the outlet, even if I shut off the
circuit. The problem is a voltage detector cannot be plugged into the outlet
to confirm no power, since it is 3-prong. Could I just use a multimeter
instead to detect voltage? Or use a circuit finder to verify that both
outlets go to the same circuit? I can't shut off the entire house either,
since some of my circuits might run through my neighbor's circuits, so I
would have to shut off his power too.
Thanks for any help.
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