People Are Adding Deadly Hacks to Outlets

there exists an immoral and unethical workaround that I've seen in homes and maybe even in a home like yours that makes a regular looking Outlet like this appear to be totally safe and normal when in reality it's not grounded and not safe both of these Outlets appear to be pretty normal they're both duplex which means they have two plugs and they have a hot a neutral and a ground on each plug so far so good I can even plug an outlet tester into any of these and I get two bulbs lit which if you look at the key here that shows that this is correctly wired and that's the same on all four of these plugs on these two outlets here they all appear to be identical when in reality there's a whole lot more going on behind the scenes that this will not reveal if I cut the power to this however and then remove the face plate we'll be able to see exactly what's wrong inside this Outlet as we look inside here what you might see conspicuously missing is a third wire here here we have our black or hot wire we have the white or neutral what's missing is the ground there is no ground coming into this receptacle at all you saw just a second ago however that the outlet tester or receptacle tester showed everything was wired correctly so how could that be that's because someone chose to use pretty shady technique here it's a hack and they've connected a jumper from the neutral wire to the ground wire and this is called a bootleg ground it's actually designed specifically to fool those Outlet testers in fact I have three different Outlet testers that I've run on this specific outlet and every one of them shows in no uncertain terms that this is wired correctly so that brings up several questions number one why doesn't the outlet detector detect this why is it showing that this is totally fine number two why would someone do this what's the point number three what's the danger like maybe I can just leave it like this and it's not a big deal and number four if I have something like this going on what can I do about it as for why these don't detect it it's because these are cheap these are usually 10 or 12 maybe this one here with the screen on it was maybe even 25 dollars for a tester and they do a great job for almost every single situation but you can't account for everything especially some shady type of behavior that some people are doing like the bootleg ground now you can purchase a tester that's a specific circuit tester meant to handle this but the problem is these cost about 300 to 400 or more just to get the results for what is hopefully a less than common situation as for why someone would do this there's a couple of main reasons let's say you live in a house and you do not have grounds in your Outlets meaning you have two prong Outlets they don't have the ground that third hole in them and we know that for a lot of the appliances and power strips and things that we want to use you need that three-prong Outlet so instead of actually doing it right and fixing the issue you could actually just fake it like this and that will give you the appear appearance of having a grounded Outlet or Outlets throughout your home there's a lot of big issues with this and there's a reason this is not only illegal but completely against code and completely unsafe but the National Electric Code or NEC really clearly states that this is under no circumstances allowed you cannot use a bootleg ground like this but if you want to sell the house and you want it to make it look more modern or more appealing that's a reason somebody may have done something like this we'll often find that the same person who did a poor job and did something unethical like this also didn't know enough about electricity to put the hot on the hot and the neutral on the neutral so they've swapped those creating what's called a reverse polarity bootleg ground which is a whole other story that we'll cover in just a minute here the reason we want to make sure that there's a ground and the ground is functioning inside our Outlets or receptacles is because that's there to protect us as humans we will basically replace the ground if a ground isn't there meaning that if there's any sort of fault or interruption in the circuit then our bodies can actually act as the ground and not in a good way this could mean that the full 15 or 20 amps from the receptacle and 120 or more volts would actually run through our bodies and connect down through our feet to the ground or our hands to something else causing us to have not only some potential risk of shock but even electrocution or death this is no joking matter this is a pretty serious issue when you see something dangerous like this what's worse is this situation that I mentioned a moment ago about the reverse polarity bootleg ground which is what I've set up right here I've got my hot wire the black one connected to the neutral or silver side and on the other side here I've got my neutral connected to my hot or brass side that means that the wires are switched I've got things going in the wrong direction but because when you add that to the bootleg ground now I've got my hot wire or my hot current connected to the neutral at all times which means it's sending that out to everything in whatever is attached to this Outlet this is a a super dangerous situation this means there is a low impedance live voltage on all grounded parts of anything you plug into that outlet which greatly increases the likelihood of shock or electrocution now fortunately this is a much less common situation but it is a far more dangerous one definitely take the time to examine what's going on there if you're not sure then make sure to turn off the circuit breaker for that and call an electrician to make sure you can get this bootleg issue fixed because that could be very lethal there are a few telltale signs that will help you to know if it's worth taking a look at your house to see if maybe you've got a bootleg ground now first of all this is most common in homes that were built at the time when ground wires and ground circuits weren't as common and this is a pretty wide range this could be the 40s 50s 60s or 70s anywhere in there and potentially even a little earlier or later but those are going to be the most common decades where you'll see this sort of thing happening also you can tell if you've got some two prong outlets in certain parts of your home but not in others that's a good indicator that the house was built without a ground circuit and that maybe some upgrades or changes were made and maybe they were done properly and maybe they weren't if you think you may have a bootleg ground in your house there's a few ways to check obviously the first one is to buy an expensive tester like this ideal circuit tester here but at 421 dollars at least at the time of this filming that's quite a bit of money to pay really the easier option even though it's more work is just to do what we've done here and pop off the plate take a look behind there and see obviously make sure to turn off your power at your circuit breaker box before doing any of this sort of inspection if you see any wire of any sort going from these silver or neutral screws down to your ground that's a bootleg round and that's dangerous this is also a great time to check for that reverse polarity that we referred to earlier because again that's a whole other level of danger to watch out for fortunately there are several ways to handle this if you do find yourself in a situation where you've got a three-prong plug like this but only two wires going into it and no ground your first option and the easiest one really is just to replace this with a two-prong outlet according to code you are able to replace a two-prong outlet with another two-prong Outlet if that's how it was wired originally that way you don't have to go through the expense of rewiring and everything but you can actually just put that two prong in there it makes it very clear that there is no ground on that a second option is to install a GFCI or ground fault circuit interrupter instead and Mark it with the included no equipment ground label you'll usually find that label in every single GFCI you can even run other three prong Outlets Downstream of this one so long as they're also marked as no equipment ground the reason a GFCI outlet like this works so well is because it actually is measuring the current coming into it and going out of it and if there's any discrepancy in what's going out to what's coming in it's going to shut it down it's going to do that to protect us and make sure that we're safe if something were to happen as far as a fault or some sort of interruption in the line the best part it's going to handle all of that computation in just milliseconds thousandths of a second so quickly that we likely wouldn't be affected at all or if we were it would be minimalized because of how quickly it would shut that power off the third option is really the best option but it's also the most costly and most invasive and that is to run new wiring throughout your home and have ground wiring put in typically this is going to cost at least about eight to ten thousand dollars to have an electrician come out and do that oftentimes more and again there's a million factors that go into that so it really just depends on your house and your wiring and how complex the job is so hopefully armed with this information you can make sure that you and your loved ones at home are safe and secure and then you have some options for what to do if you do detect a bootleg ground in your home I'm Nils with learn to DIY thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 1,098,903

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: 6ZdvuNgLb9Q

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023