I'm no wiring genius, so you all need to chime in here if I'm right out to lunch with this suggestion.
You are in the kitchen, right? I'm guessing the sink can't be too far away. Could you not run a single wire to the water pipes feeding the sink and ground to them? (I guess I'm assuming there isn't a doorway between the offending outlet and the sink)
Old House Electrical Help
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mjt
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
wletson wrote:Could you not run a single wire to the water pipes feeding the sink and ground to them? (I guess I'm assuming there isn't a doorway between the offending outlet and the sink)
It also assumes that the water supply is continuous copper or galvanized pipe. It won't do what you expect if part of the water supply has been replaced with PEX...
Re: Old House Electrical Help
mjt wrote: It also assumes that the water supply is continuous copper or galvanized pipe. It won't do what you expect if part of the water supply has been replaced with PEX...
Definitely wouldn't work if there is PEX, but if it was all metal piping, the idea should work, shouldn't it?
Warren
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phil
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
run some new wire in and dont risk burning your house down. I rewired mine and did minimal damage to the walls. if you must do it on your own get an electrician for a day to show you how to fish wires, you need a fish tape and a long bendable drill bit. There are lots of tricks but even if you need to cut a hole here or there it is repairable, a fire isn't.
Mine was knob and tube and I rewired the whole house myself and it is safe now. I saw lots of spots where the old wires were joined by just twisting them together, no solder, not even in an electrical box and there weren't a lot of renovations, but people do stupid things, and you cant see in there. I found several that were arcing and blackened and there is just no way to test for that, and they were wrapped with that old black cloth tape, a fire starting in the walls is a good possibility. don't cheap out here. Its about your safety and you won't have to tear into the walls too much. There is too much at stake here to do some mickey mouse fix.
the ground should be bonded to your plumbng but that isn't the source of the ground wire. you have a plate buried by the panel as well. the ground isn't part of the circuit and don't go confusing the ground with the neutral wire. You are getting some very questionable advice reguarding this and I know people are only attempting to help with the best of their knowledge.
Mine was knob and tube and I rewired the whole house myself and it is safe now. I saw lots of spots where the old wires were joined by just twisting them together, no solder, not even in an electrical box and there weren't a lot of renovations, but people do stupid things, and you cant see in there. I found several that were arcing and blackened and there is just no way to test for that, and they were wrapped with that old black cloth tape, a fire starting in the walls is a good possibility. don't cheap out here. Its about your safety and you won't have to tear into the walls too much. There is too much at stake here to do some mickey mouse fix.
the ground should be bonded to your plumbng but that isn't the source of the ground wire. you have a plate buried by the panel as well. the ground isn't part of the circuit and don't go confusing the ground with the neutral wire. You are getting some very questionable advice reguarding this and I know people are only attempting to help with the best of their knowledge.
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bofusmosby (WavyGlass)
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
Agree with Greenhorn. It sound like you still have some active knob-&-tube wiring. I still have some of that in my house as well. Do you have a modern updated breaker box? If so, then I would install another outlet in close proximity, and use Romex wire. If you have a modern breaker box, then you can run the Romex and ground the outlet through the box. Also, have a dedicated breaker just for this outlet. Even if you can't get under your house, you can fish the wire through with fish tape. I would stop using that old outlet, it's trying to tell you something.
Just a wonderful day in the neighborhood!
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Cephus (WavyGlass)
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
wletson wrote:I'm no wiring genius, so you all need to chime in here if I'm right out to lunch with this suggestion.
You are in the kitchen, right? I'm guessing the sink can't be too far away. Could you not run a single wire to the water pipes feeding the sink and ground to them? (I guess I'm assuming there isn't a doorway between the offending outlet and the sink)
The sink is on the other side of the room, sorry. No real way to get from the outlet to there.
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Cephus (WavyGlass)
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
bofusmosby wrote:Agree with Greenhorn. It sound like you still have some active knob-&-tube wiring. I still have some of that in my house as well. Do you have a modern updated breaker box? If so, then I would install another outlet in close proximity, and use Romex wire. If you have a modern breaker box, then you can run the Romex and ground the outlet through the box. Also, have a dedicated breaker just for this outlet. Even if you can't get under your house, you can fish the wire through with fish tape. I would stop using that old outlet, it's trying to tell you something.
Yes, still have at least some knob&tube wiring. There are two boxes, one for the original 1926 part of the house that is all screw-in fuses and a modern breaker box for the addition that was done in the 60s. There's really no way to get from one to the other though, the old section of the house is built with a small basement with open joists where they ran a lot of the wiring and piping, the new section is built on a concrete slab. It's not the circuit that's a problem, it services three outlets and a switch and none of the other outlets shows the sketchy ground.
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ChrisF (WavyGlass)
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
If it was knob & tube wiring, you wouldn't have ANY ground, since there's no metal conduit in which the wire resides.
My house was built in 1923, and there's a combination of rigid steel tubing and BX armored cable. It's this conduit that is providing you a ground, though it's not really the way it's supposed to be done.
It's possible that whatever conduit runs from your stove outlet back to a junction box somewhere has corroded, and that corrosion is causing your intermittent grounding issue. In any case, it should be properly fixed...it'll probably cost less to do that than to replace the controller board in your range every other year.
It's entirely possible that the old wiring can be used to pull new wiring through the existing conduit...I've done it a number of times in my house while renovating rooms. At least in my house, all of the rigid pipe and half of the BX had tons of extra room in it, so the wires were free to move. The other half of the BX, all of which was added later on, was tightly wound around the wiring such that the wires couldn't be pulled out.
A good electrician should be able to look at that outlet box and figure out whether new conductors, including a proper ground wire, could be pulled through.
My house was built in 1923, and there's a combination of rigid steel tubing and BX armored cable. It's this conduit that is providing you a ground, though it's not really the way it's supposed to be done.
It's possible that whatever conduit runs from your stove outlet back to a junction box somewhere has corroded, and that corrosion is causing your intermittent grounding issue. In any case, it should be properly fixed...it'll probably cost less to do that than to replace the controller board in your range every other year.
It's entirely possible that the old wiring can be used to pull new wiring through the existing conduit...I've done it a number of times in my house while renovating rooms. At least in my house, all of the rigid pipe and half of the BX had tons of extra room in it, so the wires were free to move. The other half of the BX, all of which was added later on, was tightly wound around the wiring such that the wires couldn't be pulled out.
A good electrician should be able to look at that outlet box and figure out whether new conductors, including a proper ground wire, could be pulled through.
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phil
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Re: Old House Electrical Help
"there are other devices plugged into the same outlet "
It sounds like someone has tapped into the range cable for added outlets. You should have a range cable outlet at one end and a fusebox at the other end of this wire. I am not an electrician but I am sure there are no other outlets allowed on this circuit. The fact that others have been hacking in is another reason to want to run a new range cable from the fuse box to the range outlet.
It sounds like someone has tapped into the range cable for added outlets. You should have a range cable outlet at one end and a fusebox at the other end of this wire. I am not an electrician but I am sure there are no other outlets allowed on this circuit. The fact that others have been hacking in is another reason to want to run a new range cable from the fuse box to the range outlet.