Jonathan Sachs wrote:
On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:45:29 GMT, aemeijers wrote:

Peek in the boxes with a flashlight. If the place was built mid-1960s or
later, odds are there will be a ground wire rolled up under the romex
clamps.

The house was built in 1960. I'm hoping the boxes are grounded, but if
they are not, I'd like to have a Plan B.

And you did plug one of those quick-testers
into the grounded outlets to make sure they really were grounded, right?

I haven't done that yet because I don't own the house yet, but the
home inspector did it, and he reported that several three-hole outlets
in the original living space are _not_ grounded.

A couple of people suggested going down from the attic. I haven't
examined the attic yet (see above), but I've done that before, and I
can testify that several things can make it impossible, or nearly so:
an outside wall under the eaves; any outside wall that has been
insulated; any wall with bracing. I'm hoping there's a better way.
I'm no code expert, but I recall from previous grounded-outlet threads
on here that some folks said running a ground wire via a different route
than the feed wire, was not code-compliant. As to some of your 3-holers
showing up as non-grounded- I also had some like that, that were merely
wired backward. Swapped the black and white wires, and the tester was
happy. If the boxes are not grounded, and there is no painless way to
run new wire to the outside walls, you may have to pick and choose which
outlets Really Need to be grounded. My other house down in Louisiana is
on a slab, and we had to add a couple strings to feed select spots, like
for the computers, microwave, and such, on interior walls.

--
aem sends...