3 Weird Ways to Ground a Two-Prong Electrical Outlet

if you live in an older home and you have those old style two-prong receptacles they can be kind of a pain because a lot of things that we have nowadays requires that third ground prong in order to be able to function things like computers and different appliances so if you have the situation at your house what are your options on this video we're going to cover three different ways people tend to get around this and we're going to talk about the pros and the cons of each along with what the best option is to fix this problem in your house all right so first up I want to talk about these little adapters these things here I'm sure you've seen these before these are really common you can find them in hardware stores and even I think I've seen these in grocery stores too so all they're used for is uh they give you the this ability to plug in a three-prong device that has that ground prong here into a two prong receptacle and you can see how that works here is a two-prong two-prong receptacle if they'll focus in here and then here's this adapter it just goes in just like that now these are sometimes called current Taps so if you just ask for an adapter you know it's not really clear what that might be so you might have to ask for a current tap if this is what you're looking for the advantage that this has is if you're in a situation where you're say running an apartment that only has the two prong receptacles and you need to be able to plug in something that has three prongs well this is probably going to be your only option to get around that issue now I will say though that this is not supposed to be a permanent solution this is only supposed to be temporary sometimes people think that these are actually actually provide you with the ground and it doesn't and I think the reason why they believe that is because of this little metal tab at the bottom here so what this tab is for what you'll do with this is you'll actually take the cover screw out of the cover plate that goes over this outlet and then you'll put that cover screw through this hole and tighten it down okay so truth be told what I just explained in the video isn't exactly true so that this tab is not provided ground Well turns out if you read the bottom of this it says that this tab is supposed to be connected to a ground screw now I did some digging on this and basically the same scenario applies you put a screw through this tab and then that screw that holds the cover plate on connects to the receptacle and then in theory how this gives you a ground is that receptacle is connected to a metal box inside the wall and that metal box is connected to some metal conduit that has the wiring ran through it now that metal conduit is supposed to be grounded so in theory 3 what's going to happen is this ground is going to connect all the way through through two different screws technically all the way back down to a grounding source and provide you a ground now I would say that I wouldn't trust that because I can think of a lot of different ways a lot of different reasons why that ground isn't going to be definitely dependable so I'd still look at this as a temporary solution but I did want to make sure that I included this in this video because that's actually what these are supposed to be for and I want to make sure you have accurate information a common thing you'll find in renovated houses are these so instead of having the two prong receptacles you'll see a three-prong GFCI and you'll see these in locations other than just the bathroom and the kitchen you know in those wet areas in the house the reason why these are used is because these can actually work without a ground wire because of the circuitry that's built inside of them so what the circuitry is designed to do is it's designed to detect the amount of current the amount of electricity that's flowing between the hot side and the neutral side within this outlet and if it text a variance even a very very small variance then it's going to shut the power off to this receptacle and it'll provide you that extra layer of safety and protection so with these because it has that circuitry it doesn't need that ground wire installed and this is something that is a really solid solution if you're looking to renovate a house on a budget you don't want to have to pay for you know additional wiring in the home or maybe sometimes you just can't afford to fix a situation at your house this is going to give you more of a permanent solution it will give you that third prong and it will give you an extra degree of safety to protect you against any kind of ground faults that might occur in your house or at least with the things that are plugged into this now there have been a lot of comments that I've received about whether or not this is a safe practice or not it's going to depend on your local Electrical Codes but at the same time it is an NEC approved practice and I'm going to have a reference here on the screen that will pop up I encourage you if you have the 2020 version of the NEC handbook to go check out this reference read up on this and see what it has to say about doing this in-house something else you'll find that's pretty common is this thing here that's called a bootleg ground and what this is is the practice of taking this neutral wire and then connecting it to not only the neutral terminal on the receptacle but also connecting it to the ground screw as well now this is probably a little bit more common than it should be unfortunately and the problem with this first and foremost is it's illegal second problem is it causes house fires and the third problem is is it's not approved by the national electrical code so you don't want to be doing this now I will admit this is more of an extreme example because I'm using a ground wire here that has no insulation on it whatsoever typically you'd find like you know a neutral wire and it would be connected in these two locations but at the end of the day this is basically what it is and what this will do is if you plug in a tester or something like that to see if a ground is present it's going to show that a ground is present because of this wire that's connected to this ground here sometimes that's done just to pass inspections to sell a house which is really unfortunate because it is like I said a really big safety hazard but just know that if someone mentions just using a bootleg ground in order to get around it and providing that ground for you and doing something like this then don't do that okay sometimes it is common to confuse which wire is hot and which wire is neutral when receptacles are being wired and so in really really unfortunate situations someone has done this and they've confused what wire goes to which terminal and actually what ends up happening then is the ground and everything that's connected to that receptacle is actually hot and live so if they plug in an appliance like a blender or something like that that has a metal casing to it then the entire outside of that Appliance then is actually having live current run through it and so it's really dangerous practice again I know I've said it before I'll say it again don't use bootleg grounds in order to fix this problem use another method now if you really want to fix this problem permanently and have all the safety features of having a ground wire there's simply no replacement to having the proper wire in installed in your house yes I know it can be expensive especially if you have a you know a home that's multiple stories maybe you have a breaker box that's located in the basement and you've got a two-story home something like that it can get really expensive because you know typically when you're pulling new wire you're going to have to open up drywall and you have all sorts of things that you might have to deal with but at the end of the day if you're selling a house or if you want that peace of mind that everything is right in your home then I highly encourage you to contact a licensed electrician and talk to them see what options you have and also see what the cost is of actually rewiring your house you might actually be surprised at what it would take to do this the right way and get the correct wiring installed and you'll never know if you don't ask all right so those are the options those are the three common things that I've seen in order to get around not having a round wire in your house hopefully you found this video helpful if you did don't forget to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Top Homeowner

Views: 94,982

Keywords: home improvement, diy projects, home repair, home remodeling, diy, remodeling, homeowner, top homeowner, tophomeowner, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, How To Fix, How To Install, electrical, Ungrounded Two-Prong Electrical Outlets, Two-Prong Electrical Outlets, Electrical Outlets, Outlets, two prong receptacle, two prong receptacles, rewire home, rewire house, two prong to three prong outlet, how to ground an outlet without a ground wire, bootleg ground, gfci two wires

Id: INQ9iZebz_Y

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022