All right, I'm feeling mildly dumb and a little sheepish not to mention
slightly sick here... just bought a house for the first time less than
a month ago, and knew that it had some minor wiring "issues" but now
that I'm assessing what I have it appears that there are bigger issues
than previously anticipated. Anyway, here's the deal. House is a two
story colonial with full basement, built late 1940's. Excellent
structural condition, lovely hardwood floors albeit in need of a
refinishing. Paid for a home inspection prior to placing a bid on
house. Inspector noted some electrical items that would be against code
now for new construction but nothing major (things like clothes washer
sharing a circuit with other receptacles, lack of GFCIs in the kitchen,
etc.) all receptacles in house are three prong type and tested OK with
cheap little $5 circuit tester. All visible wiring was old BX w/ cloth
covered conductors and inspector said that grounding through the armor
of the BX while not the way we do things now was perfectly OK. So I was
feeling pretty good about things electrically, and that gave me a good
feeling about the house, as I automatically anticipated issues with lack
of grounds etc. in a house of this age. Well some of the receps. were
a little loose and old looking so I bought a pack of new ones and
proceeded to replace them. Basement went fine. Got to the first floor
and identified some issues that will be easy to rectify. Then I got to
the three oldest circuits in the house, one of which started life as the
general first floor circuit and another the general second floor circuit
(the latter of which still serves the entire second floor.) The third
is a lighting only circuit which serves the lights at the stair
landings. It appears that throughout the house wherever the wiring was
hidden behind plaster it was run in NM not BX and there is no grounding,
period. I don't have a big problem with that on a lighting only circuit
but the receptacles installed on the first and second floor are
grounding type and it appears that the ground is provided by a jumper at
each receptacle between the ground terminal and the neutral. I realize
that *theoretically* this is functionally identical, but this isn't the
way we do things now, so it bothers me a little bit.

questions:

1) is this actually an acceptable method of retrofitting receptacles to
grounded type? I suspect not, but you never can tell.

2) if not, is this the kind of thing that would generally be covered by
a home warranty? We did spend the $$ for one, although AFAIK it
generally only covers things like appliances etc.

I don't blame the inspector for missing this one; he would have had to
pull a receptacle either on the south side of the first floor or
somewhere on the second floor to identify this issue; there's a lot of
wiring visible in the basement but it is all either BX or obviously
recently added Romex which does contain a ground, so there was no reason
to believe that this wasn't consistent throughout the house. However,
the transition from exposed BX to hidden NM seems to be original to the
house as far as I can tell; I wonder why that would be?

Any help, thoughts, advice, etc. greatly appreciated.

thanks,

nate

(it's a good thing the girlie was planning on repainting, I guess...)

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