Old House Electrical Help

[Cephus (WavyGlass)]

This may not be the place to ask, but I figured what the heck.

I've got a 1926 home, all of the electrical in the front have of the house is ungrounded, 2-prong stuff. A few of the outlets, I've replaced over the years and work fine, I'm having a serious problem with the outlet that feeds my refrigerator and stove though. I replaced the outlet a long time ago and it's worked perfectly for 13 years. About a year ago, we replaced the stove with a new one and it worked fine for about 6 months, then started resetting. We had warranty service in about 20x, cost Frigidaire more in service costs than the stove is worth, and finally figured out that it's a problem in the outlet. It reverses ground at random, we'd sit there with a tester, nothing moving, and watch the lights switch on and off.

Unfortunately, it's an ancient 2-wire metal-clad system. Usually, you can simply ground the outlet to the box, but in this case it isn't working. There is no way I'm going to rip apart my walls to run a ground wire back to the breaker box, nor will sticking an ungrounded GFCI outlet in the box work. It really sucks because we ran another Frigidaire stove on the exact same plug without incident for 12 years, now their new models require a much more steady supply of current or a better ground and I really don't know what to do. I talked to an electrician and he said he'd have to rip the walls out. Not a chance.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

[Neighmond]

Two capacitors and a pair of diodes and make a filtered power supply. Plug the thing in between the wall and range. Ground it manually with a wire you know is attached to something anchored in earth.

I did that with the computer and radio outlets here

[nan-nan]

Instead of ripping through walls, is surface mounting new wire with a protective cover an option? I see this in the UK old houses.

[SkipW]

Where is the box in relation to the kitchen?

Do you have a crawl space? Cellar? Attic?

It just seems dramatic that you'd have to "rip the walls out" just to run a wire.

There has GOT to be a way to end run a new service wire to the range.

If that is ABSOLUTELY not an option how about testing both wires in the metal clad sheath and see which one grounds out to the sheath, kill it, use the good one for hot and make a new ground to known good ground?

(or find a great electrician that loves old houses)

[mjt]

(or find a great electrician that loves old houses)

Ours has been a wizard at pulling wires with a minimum of (new) holes.

I've been able to pull new wires without any new holes in some instances by using the old wire as the "fish tape". Attach the new wire to the old one at one end and pull it through from the other end...

[jschneider]

Rewired my 3 floor Victorian... there's ALWAYS a way to pull new wires with minimal damage.

[Cephus (WavyGlass)]

Where is the box in relation to the kitchen?

Do you have a crawl space? Cellar? Attic?

It just seems dramatic that you'd have to "rip the walls out" just to run a wire.

There has GOT to be a way to end run a new service wire to the range.

If that is ABSOLUTELY not an option how about testing both wires in the metal clad sheath and see which one grounds out to the sheath, kill it, use the good one for hot and make a new ground to known good ground?

(or find a great electrician that loves old houses)

It's not that close and there's no real way to get it there. This particular outlet is a pain anyhow, over the years, people have trimmed the wire back farther and farther, now there is just enough wire to force it over the outlet terminals and there's no way to run anything back down the conduit and the crawlspace under the house is literally 12 inches high, no way to get into it, even if I wanted to.

I just wish Frigidaire didn't make their new stove so damn sensitive! The old one worked like a champ for over a decade!

[Cephus (WavyGlass)]

(or find a great electrician that loves old houses)

Ours has been a wizard at pulling wires with a minimum of (new) holes.

I've been able to pull new wires without any new holes in some instances by using the old wire as the "fish tape". Attach the new wire to the old one at one end and pull it through from the other end...

That might be something I could do if it came right down to it, assuming I can figure out which wire goes where. That's the problem in this house, everything goes straight into the walls and happens there, not somewhere easy to get to.

[Daniel Meyer]

Where is the box in relation to the kitchen?

Do you have a crawl space? Cellar? Attic?

It just seems dramatic that you'd have to "rip the walls out" just to run a wire.

There has GOT to be a way to end run a new service wire to the range.

If that is ABSOLUTELY not an option how about testing both wires in the metal clad sheath and see which one grounds out to the sheath, kill it, use the good one for hot and make a new ground to known good ground?

(or find a great electrician that loves old houses)

It's not that close and there's no real way to get it there. This particular outlet is a pain anyhow, over the years, people have trimmed the wire back farther and farther, now there is just enough wire to force it over the outlet terminals and there's no way to run anything back down the conduit and the crawlspace under the house is literally 12 inches high, no way to get into it, even if I wanted to.

I just wish Frigidaire didn't make their new stove so damn sensitive! The old one worked like a champ for over a decade!

Take it for what it is...a sign that something is wrong with that circuit. Time to replace or repair it correctly. It's warning you nicely ("not-nicely" usually involves smoke and fire and screaming).

Don't overlook that it could be a failure in a junction somewhere "upstream" that you might be able to get to. Pays to check it out.

[Cephus (WavyGlass)]

Take it for what it is...a sign that something is wrong with that circuit. Time to replace or repair it correctly. It's warning you nicely ("not-nicely" usually involves smoke and fire and screaming).

Don't overlook that it could be a failure in a junction somewhere "upstream" that you might be able to get to. Pays to check it out.

That's the thing, I don't know that there is anything wrong with the circuit, there are other devices plugged into the same outlet and none of them have any problems whatsoever. It is only one appliance that has higher requirements than any others, it even requires a positive hot to function properly, whereas nothing else cares of the hot wire is positive or negative.

So far as I can tell, there's only one plug upstream and it doesn't show any grounding problems. Then again, the problems with the plug in question have been sporadic at best so maybe it just wasn't having an issue at the time I checked?

Besides, there really aren't many places in the line that I can even access, the lines are totally in the wall, they drop to the basement for about 8 feet, then it's back up into a wall straight out to the fuse panel.