Doug Miller wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Hi All: I have an older home which has a lot of wiring that is the
very old romex? with two wires (black and white) and no ground
wire.
The bathroom has GFI outlets and I noticed that someone tied the
bare
ground to nuetral (white) assuming this would be eventually
connected
to ground. An electrician told me that this is bad because there
can
be current flow in your nuetral side. (makes sense).

I was planning on disconnecting the bare gorund wire from nuetral.
Does that mean that the GFI outlet will no longer detect current to
ground?

No. GFCIs operate by detecting an imbalance in the current flowing in
the
black and white wires. The bare wire is not needed for proper
operation.

Doug's right, as you can verify by using the GFCI test button after
removing the incorrect ground jumper. The built-in test button leaks
current to neutral, bypassing the GFCI detection, so it should always
work. However, plug-in GFCI testers will not trip this outlet, as they
function by leaking a bit of current to ground.

GFCI's are the recommended quick-and-dirty fix for ungrounded circuits
throughout the house, and many now come with little "NO EQUIPMENT
GROUND" stickers that you're supposed to put on the faceplaces of the
outlet, and on downstream outlets (along with the ones that say
"PROTECTED BY GFI").

Chip C