On Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:44:06 PM UTC-4, TomR wrote:
"TomR" wrote in message
...
This question was posted in another forum by someone that I know and I
thought that I would try posting it here to get some feedback on his
behalf:

He wrote,

"In a house that has ungrounded, 2 prong outlets, with wiring in good
condition, is it acceptable (and allowed by current electrical code) to
run a separate ground wire from the outlets back to the ground at the
panel, in order to be able to replace the 2 prong outlets with 3 prong
outlets? Existing wiring is in very good shape."

Thanks everyone. As I mentioned previously, I did read all of the replies
and passed on the info that I learned etc.

But, I decided to come back to this and post an additional message because I
just got done doing work on a house that I "indirectly" own and which has
mostly all 2-prong outlets where the "Existing wiring is in very good shape"
as in the original question. I discovered that it has metal outlet boxes
and all of the 2-prong receptacles are in metal boxes that are grounded with
a thin ground wire that runs inside the same sheathed wire that contains the
black and white wires. So, I was able to switch out some of the 2-prong
receptacles and replace them with regular 3-prong receptacles that are
grounded to the metal outlet box.

When you say "sheathed wire" you are referring to type AC aka "BX" correct? Just wanted to make sure. If so, everything is fine and what you've done is perfectly OK. In fact, this is a situation where buying "spec grade" receptacles with the little self-grounding clip can save you a lot of work; then you don't have to make up/buy pigtails or drill/tap your boxes for ground screws.

nate