It is not correct to wire outlets in that fashion, and I wouldn't expect
your home warranty to cover it, because it's not "broken" or something that
broke down, just improperly wired outlets. For people protection you can
install GFCI outlets, but it doesn't help for equipment that needs to be
grounded, for that you'll need to run grounded cables to those locations


"Nate Nagel" wrote in message
...
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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