On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 04:56:50 GMT, Richard Kaiser
wrote:

"David Jensen" wrote in message
om...
I have a 50 year old house that I am remodeling. It has the old
2-prong style (non-grounded) receptacles. From what I understand,
the code will not technically allow it, but, is there any reason
why I shouldn't use the regular grounded receptacles to replace
the old two prong? The old ones have been painted over several
times and I'm thinking it will look nice to replace them. An
electrician tells me that the neutral wire can be daisy chained
to the ground screw so that we don't need to run a new ground
wire. Is there any harm or problem or reason why I would not
want to do that? You can buy the old 2-prong style, but they are
expensive. I was told that you can also put a GFI at every
position, but that is even more expensive.

Thank you very much for your thoughts on this matter.

David

Your options are use GFIs, tie grounds to neutrals, or add a ground wire
and use three prong outlets.


As was discussed, tieing grounds to neutrals is not an option.

Another option is to re-wire with modern wiring that has a ground
conductor.

GFCIs are only an option where only personal safety is a concern. If
there are other reaons for havong a grounded outlet, such as surge
protectors and EMI/RFI sheilding of electronics gear, you absoultely
need to have a ground back to the panel.


As others have posted, you can put in a three prong outlet and wire the
ground (bare copper) to the neutral (white wire). This is not a good idea

No, others have stated you cannot, for the reaons you state though.

as you will defeat the ground as a safety device and could be creating
a shock hazard. If the neutral fails between the outlet and the service
panel the grounded case will be HOT (ie 120 volts). An inductive load
such as a motor will not have much resistance. Kill this idea, not
yourself (and whoever owns your house next).

The easiest legal thing to do is to use a GFI outlet. The GFI comes
with a bunch of stickers including one that says "No Equipment Ground"
that needs to be put on the outlet. If money is a consideration then
you only need one GFI for the first outlet in each circuit. Connect
the downstream outlets to the LINE terminals and they will be
protected too. Note that GFIs are not recommended for larger motors
such as stationary woodworking saws and washing machines or for
devices that should not loose power such as medical equipment or
refridgerators. Determining which outlets are downstream and which
is the first outlet may require disconnecting the hot wire (black
wire) (pull the fuse or breaker first) to find out which outlets
go dead. Just to make things difficult there is type of circuit
called a shared common that has two hot wires (probably black and
red) and they share a single neutral (white). If the voltage between
the black and red wire is over 200 volts then you can only use a
GFI for each outlet, a single GFI cannot protect the downstream
outlets without totaly rewiring the circuit.

If you really want to stay cheap or want to do it right then run
new ground wires. Run one ground wire for each circuit and
try to follow the routing of the circuit. The new wires can be run
under walls if a basement or crawl space provides access. You can
also run the wire under the baseboards with the runs to the outlet
inside the wall or in a grove in the drywall. Home electrical wiring
books explain how to run wires in existing structures, its more than
I can explain in a usenet posting. This is also one of the topics
that dont' think I could explain without non-family oriented language.
If your service panel does not have a ground connection then tie
the new ground wires to a cold water pipe or put in a new ground
spike (or preferable both).

PS Do not try any of this if you do not have a basic understanding
of how a house is wired.

PPS To really do this right pull the drywall off. You should see
my kitchen (to be).

If you really want to get this right, simply replace the old 2-wire
wiring with new 2 wire + ground.


PPPS Please correct if I did not get the grounding correct.


Richard Kaiser