5 ways ways to fix an "open ground" UPDATED Video in description!!

what's up see electrical diy coach just remember never repeat anything in these videos and never work on an energized circuit let's get to it let's go ahead and get started today so today we're going to be dealing with a super popular um you know topic and it comes up very often on inspection reports or if you're just in your home trying to make things safer i'm really excited about this video so let's go ahead and jump in so the first way that you can satisfy an open ground and i want to make a distinction really quick so if you are in a location where there is a ground wire and it's showing open ground then you're going to want to contact a qualified electrician or you know you can check out um some of the things in our videos to get some education but you are actually just missing with a broken link in your ground connection back to the panel that's different than what we're dealing with today what we're dealing with today is if you have two prong receptacles and the buyer saying hey i'm not gonna buy it with these in there or i want you know somebody to look at it or if you're just wanting to make your home safer and you're wanting to be able to be allowed to install that third prong or if you're in a situation where they do have three prong receptacles already but it's showing open ground and there's no ground in the box so let's go ahead and jump right in so the first way number one that you can fix an open missing ground situation is you can simply or not so simply just rewire the location so you can bring a new cable to that location you'll have a hot a ground and a neutral you can hook up a three-prong receptacle with no problems and the way you would do that is that it's in article 210 of the code book it's just a basic you know wiring of branch circuits you're also going to use article 300 for your wiring methods but that's probably after i teach you everything that you're going to learn today that's probably going to be the absolute last route that you're going to take unless you're just in a situation where the wire is really degraded and the reason is is that there are so many other ways to satisfy this situation um you know i'll have people call me all the time hey my house was built in the 40s the 50s the 60s 70s even in the 80s and they're like oh we just need to rewire the whole thing and you know sometimes that is the case but more often than not with the new technology and the awesome breakers that we have now and the different things you really can bring bring a home back to life with the new technology and use the old wires that are there now sometimes we do do whole house rewires even you know later homes that you would not really expect but so i just you know really excited about that so if that's you you kind of fall in that category check this video out and hopefully we can uh do a little bit of uh you know help you a little bit give you a little bit of education on it so i'm gonna go ahead and pause the video for just a second and set myself up for the next leg and we're gonna start with number two right so let's go ahead and check out the second way that you can satisfy the open ground situation missing ground in your home so the second way is listed right here in 250.130 c and what we're going to be dealing with today is that it says non-grounding type receptacle replacement or branch circuit extensions and that's a lesson for a different day on the equipment ground and conductor of a grounding type receptacle or branch circuit extensions shall be permitted to be connected to any of the following so what this means is is we're going to look at these parameters here typically you're going to be in one through four okay what you're going to be allowed to do is take a green insulated wire stranded or solid and physically fish just the ground wire to the location that you're at so say if you were at a two-pronged situation okay and you're over here in your room okay you're going to be physically allowed to fish a ground wire just from there to there and then be able to legally install a three-prong receptacle and there are several different ways that you can do this and we're going to talk about them but one thing i do want to note and that's right here number four is that the one that i'm teaching you right now is in number four and one thing i do want to know is that this circuit must originate from the same panel as this circuit so you are allowed to borrow a ground wire from a neighboring circuit but it must originate from the same panel but let's go ahead and get started right with number one so number one says you can do any accessible point on the grounding electrode system so anywhere in the grounding electrode system you can use this wire to fish to that location and then bring it to your receptacle location and be allowed to install a three-prong receptacle there no problem and you're going to satisfy the grounding situation i do want to note that when you get done and i have other videos teaching you how to do this that you're going to want to check and verify from hot to ground and just make sure that there is 120 volts or whatever your voltage is and that way just to make sure that that ground is all the way connected back to the panel so number two here is the accessible point on the grounding electrode system uh or the grounding electrode conductor itself so if you can grab the grounding electrode conductor you can actually attach to it number three says the equipment grounding conterminal uh excuse me equipment grounding terminal bar within the enclosure where the branch circuit for the receptacle originates so here's your panel here's your receptacle over in this room you can physically fish one of these wires from this panel to this receptacle location and now you can legally put a three-prong receptacle so that's another way you can do it and this one says here which is the one i started out with number four says that the equipment grounding conductor that's part of another branch circuit as long as it originates from the same panel so i gotta get a little excited there and got ahead of the game but say you have a receptacle here two foot over you have a receptacle here this one seems to have a good working ground you can actually fish one of these wires from this one to this one as long as these two breakers both originate from the same panel so it's really cool okay for so for number three we find ourselves over here in article 406 of the code book 406 is all about receptacles cord caps and attachment plugs so we find ourselves in 406.4 d 2 and this is where we're at today so it's non-grounding type receptacles that's what they're calling a two-prong receptacle as a non-grounding type receptacle okay so there the number three the third way that you can do it this section here says that you you know where the ground conductor does not exist i do want to point that out remember this is a location where there's no ground at all okay so where the ground uh wire does not exist you can do any one of these things and we're getting ready to look at them now so the third way that you can satisfy the non-ground open ground is by replacing it with another ground non-grounding type receptacle so you can do a like for like and satisfy the code so what you're going to do is you're going to come to this location and you have to be really careful even as a licensed electrician because it's easy to get the polarity reversed on these so you still want to set your orientation with the neutral on the left if you're facing it okay that is still going to be silver for neutral okay and it's going to be black on brass okay my lines are getting a little squiggly there all right so when you do this method and you just replace a like for like you have to be kind of careful when you install this receptacle and the reason is is it's really easy to get polarity reversed so you still have the hot prong on the right if you're facing the receptacle and you still have the neutral prong on the left okay always remember that the larger hole is the neutral okay and you're still going to have silver over here for the neutral side and you're still going to have brass for the hot side which is going to be your black wire typically but one thing you have to watch even as a licensed electrician if you're not paying attention if you flip that upside down you can get your polarity reversed so and it's a little bit harder to check it with a meter because there's no ground reference so you're checking across the two of course you're going to read 120 whether it's this way or that way so that's just something to watch out for when you install these but the third way to satisfy the code is you can actually replace a like for like and it's still meet code today the only thing about that is is that if you have a buyer and this is a home respect inspection report or if you're doing your own home they're going to want to see that grounding prompt that's what everybody wants they want to be able to plug in anything they want to and feel like they're safe when they do it so that's the only thing about this one so let's go ahead and take a look at the fourth way okay so the fourth way when we get into it is going to be right here in part b so it says that non-grounding type receptacles shall be permitted to be replaced with a ground fault circuit interrupter type receptacle okay these receptacles or their cover plates shall be marked no equipment ground and that's really important we're going to learn about the type receptacle you can use here in just a second but when you do this method you must uh your packaging will typically come with a little sticker that says no equipment ground and the reason that's really important is because when you look here at a um this is a dual function receptacle but it also has gfci technology when you look at this receptacle you're going to see the ground prong okay but it's still even though we've satisfied the code and it is technically gfci protected okay there is no equipment ground and conductor connected to here so if someone hooks a drill or a sensitive piece of equipment to it they may want to know that they have that grounding prong there in case of a fault or some other situation so you have to mark them no equipment ground and have that labeled on the faceplate or right there okay but you are allowed to replace it with that and the code will be satisfied and you will be a whole lot safer and i'm going to explain why so one of the biggest misnomers is that you're required to have this and this connected for a gfci to work correctly and in this case it's just um what it is is that the gfci is actually sensing in between the hot and the neutral and if there's any discrepancy then it shuts off you actually do not need the ground prong for a gfci to work correctly you do not need a ground at all it's great to have it because it's going to clear a fault it's going to allow that current to leak quickly okay and the sensing be imbalanced here and it shut off but you actually do not have to have an equipment ground for gfci technology to work also you do not have to have an equipment ground for the gfci technology to carry on so what this code is going to allow you to do is you are going to be able to install a gfci at the first location where you do not have a ground then downstream from that you're allowed to hook up a three-prong receptacle and code still be satisfied and then downstream from that you're allowed to hook up a three-prong receptacle and code still be satisfied you have to be careful with these guys right here though the reason is is inside the packaging some of these brands only allow you to protect so many receptacles downstream before you add another one so that's a the fourth way that you can satisfy the code okay just remember you have to put the label that says no uh equipment ground okay uh and you put that label on there another thing i want to note out um is that wherever you're at most likely the location is also going to be required to be afci protected so you're likely going to want to use a receptacle like this that is afci and gfci protected but that is something that you're going to have to address with the situation that you're in today we're talking about correcting the non-grounding the missing ground situation so let's go ahead and move on to the fifth and final way that you can satisfy the code and it kind of correlates with this one but it's a little bit different so this one says in part c it says non-grounding type receptacle shall be permitted to be replaced um with grounding type receptacles so you're allowed to put a three-prong receptacle where that circuits receptacles supplied through a ground fault circuit interrupter grounding type receptacles or or their cover plates shall be marked gfci protected and no equipment grounding conductor so it kind of adds another level there you're required to put another sticker basically it's saying the same thing you can protect it with one of these but the fifth way i want to show you in the way that we use most often in the field is through one of these this is a square d version um and what this is is they sell breakers this one may be artful or ground fault only but i just use this as an example so they sell breakers that you can actually protect the entire circuit all the way from the panel so let me explain how this works so you would install a breaker like this that's gfci protected and like i said you're likely going to be an area that requires afci protection but no worries because they sell a breaker that satisfies arc fault and ground fault so you'll be super protected all the way from the panel so say i'm back here at the panel i go install this breaker right here and everywhere that this wire leaves is now afci and gfci protected so at every single one of those locations i can legally install a three-prong receptacle okay and everything be satisfied with code my bot potential buyer the electrical inspector and i've done everything correctly what's awesome about this is it allows you to do one thing and i have videos on this remember never repeat anything in these videos just use them for educational purposes only but now you're protected and can install a gfci receptacle at a regular receptacle excuse me a regular three-prong receptacle at each one of these locations and be satisfied to code and be a whole lot safer for the situation one thing i want to note whether you're using this method right here or this method right here okay what you're going to want to do is after you get this installed so say we've came here we've installed our breaker we've gone to one two three receptacles after you get this installed or this installed either one what you're going to want to do is go back to the first point where you installed the gfci protection and you're going to want to hit this test button and you're going to want to hit this test button right here and the reason is you're going to want to make sure that these receptacles downstream do shut off when that test button is pushed so if installed correctly okay when you hit that test button it's going to shut off everything downstream from it if wired correctly okay and that is going to let you know that you've done your job so um i hope that you guys enjoyed this video please like and subscribe for more videos i'm trying to build the world's largest library of free electrical installations we just want to see you guys win um you can check out the electrical code coach channel which is geared more toward the code side of things or you can check out the electrical diy coach channel which is where we're going to build the world's largest library of free electrical installation tips and trick tricks videos done by a professional remember never repeat anything in these videos and i hope that you guys stay safe if there's anything i can do to help you in life or business please let me know at electricalcodecoach gmail.com thanks guys

Channel: Electrical Code Coach

Views: 141,453

Keywords: Electrician, DIY, DIY Electrical, diy electrical, do it your self, do it your self electrical, do it yourself electrical, master, master electrican, master the, NEC, National Electrical, National Electrical Code, journeyman, journeyman electrician, journeyman exam prep, exam prep, electrical exam, electrical exam prep, how to electrical, romex, ibew, union electrician, commercial electrician, wireman, electrical apprentice, electrician apprentice, tripped, electrical troubleshooting

Id: lGTauC0hHlw

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020