Note that Romex installed in the 1950s will NOT look like white extension
cord. It will be covered with tarred braid and look like a stiff flattened
black extension cord. Since then many colours have been used, in my house
built in 1970 I have black, blue, brown, orange as well as the current vinyl
covered Romex with white, orange and red covering. They are now using the
covering colour to indicate the wire gauge such as yellow for 12 ga. Earlier
it was the colour of the manufacturer's brand, like with power tools.


"MarkL" wrote in message
ups.com...
I can think of a couple options. You can put a surge protector at the
service panel so the whole house would be protected. This is expensive
but nowhere near $12K. I would guess it's under $1K. To answer your
question, yes you can ground certain outlets but in the future that
would present a problem if you tried to sell the house. Once you
initiate an upgrade like that you're required to bring all the wiring
up to code. You didn't mention what kind of wiring you have. Do you
know if it's in conduit (looks like steel water pipe), romex (looks
like a white extension cord), bx (looks like a flexible metal snake).
I'd get another contractor to look at it, but don't tell them what the
other person said.


On May 2, 11:46 am, wrote:
I recently purchased a home built in the 1960s. While doing
renovations, I got an electrician out to inspect my wiring. He said it
was fine, and wasn't worth rewiring the entire house, but I have no
grounding, which he said meant surge protectors wouldn't work. He said
to add grounding, he would basically need to rewire the whole house,
which would cost about $12000. Is it possible to ground just certain
outlets and/or to get "grounded" in a less costly manner?

Thanks!