Replies

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 01, 1999 08:53pm | #1

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   Linda,

   I am not an electrician, but I did want to comment on one thing.

   The type of outlets you mentioned are called Ground Fault Interrupters (GFI). They are only needed in close proximity to a water supply. I would not install them throughout the house for two reasons. First is the cost, and the second, I know someone who had an electrician install them in their entire kitchen. The refigerator tripped it when they were away on vacation.......Nothing like coming home to a house stinking of rotted food.

   Good luck with your project.

2. 
   TPBosworth | Jun 01, 1999 08:55pm | #2

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   Lisa:

   In my opinion, it's way better to bite the bullet while you've got the walls open than to wait. The beaucoup bucks you refer to can be managed by attacking the problem in pieces. I would recommend that you do the following:

   1) Upgrade your electrical service to a current circuit breaker panel. Leave the sizing up to your electrician, but this will provide you with more flexibility, safety and peace of mind. The job typically runs in the $500 - $800 range.

   2) As you open up a room to remodel, remove all the old wiring and fixtures. Replace with new boxes (plastic is OK for wall recepticals; make sure you use a special box for any ceiling fans) and new wiring to your brand new panel.

   If you are doing the work yourself, you can perform a lot of the grunt work, provided you have the guidance/advice of a qualified electrician. In fact, you can "rough in" the wiring and have him/her finish it out. This arrangement obviously requires a friendly electrician (like a relative), but it can work out.

   As to th suggestion of repoacing all the recepticals with GFI recepticals (the "bathroom plugs"), that's not a good idea. You still won't have a proper ground. You'll have some improved protection, but not an alternate current path required by things that have a 3-prong plug. Your second suggestion of just putting 3-prong plugs into the old 2-prong boxes is a very bad idea. Again -- there won't be a proper ground wire provided for that third prong. By the time you actually install a proper ground wire, you will have endured the pain and most of the expense of putting new wires in.

   Good luck!

1. 
   David_Bell | Jun 01, 1999 11:42pm | #3

   *I agree with TPB. Get a good book on electrical wiring and read it til you understand grounding. Run the wire yourself and install boxes yourself. If you have to get a permit or are uncomfortable get an electrician to wire up a new 200 amp or so panel and install good quality plugs. Or--wire up all your plugs and get an elecrician to inspect your work if you can find one to do it. I taught myself to wire, did the whole job myself, used oversized wire and commercial plugs in my house and haven't tripped a breaker or burned myself up yet.

1. 
   Bill_H. | Jun 02, 1999 01:46am | #4

   *Lisa, in addition to the above I would add:12 gauge wire as opposed to lighter 14 gaugeMore outlets per wall, my goal is NO extension cords inside the house,this includes those multi-outlet strips, also consider two gang boxes so outlets don't look like an octopus.This could be a good time for additional coax & or phone (cat5 for computers).If redoing circuits, be generous. A 15 amp circuit doesn't have much juice left after a space heater or hair dryer is on, some appliances are sensitive to fluctuations.If you do choose to use GFCI protection, be aware outlets wired after the GFCI outlet can also be protected. This may come in handy if you remember which outlet in room is "first" so the recepticle can be changed to GFCI later.

1. 
   Phil_Walsh | Jun 02, 1999 01:48am | #5

   *Lisa, I agree that you should upgrade to a gounded system. In fact you may be required to, if like me you have to deal with permits and inspectors. However, if you decide not to rewire, GFI outlets will give you protection against electrocution. Essentially, a circuit breaker protects the house by preventing a fire due to overheating wire, but it won't trip in time to prevent electrocution. A GFI is designed to protect people; it compares the current in the hot and neutral wires, and if they aren't within a few milliamps of each other it trips. You don't need to replace all the outlets, though. If you can figure out which outlet is the first one on each circuit (i.e. closest to the circuit breaker or fuse box) and put a GFI there, it will protect the whole circuit. Alternately, you can get GFI circuit breakers, but they're pretty expensive. You really outta rewire and ground if at all possible, though.

3. 
   Guest_ | Jun 02, 1999 03:50am | #6

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   Howdy Lisa:

   Unless you are absolutely broke, I would replace all wiring in any walls in which drywall is removed. The cost of a spool of 12-2 wire is about $30. Grounded outlets run a couple bucks each. Add a couple dollars for wire nuts, tape and staples, and your total cost is probably less than $50.

   Heck, if you really want to go cheapo, don't connect the grounds yet, just leave them loose, and worry about connecting them under the house later. But at least you have up to date Romex in the sealed walls, which can not be done later.

   Assuming you like where you are living, I would recommend it. If of course you intend to sell, then, forget it.

   Hope this helps.

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 02, 1999 04:33am | #7

   *Lisa -One thing that was not clear in your post - when you refer to ungrounded plugs are you just talking about the two-prong vs three-prong plugs? Many '60s houses were wired in BX - the cable with the spiral metal armor on it - they just didn't use the three prong grounded plugs. Is this what you have? If so, the metal armor will take the place of the bare ground wire found in today's type NM cable and you can just replace the receptacles and ground the green grounding screw to the metal box.

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 02, 1999 10:44am | #8

   *Good advice. I'd use GFIs where you need em. Upgrade what you can. Definitely upgrade the panel.As an aside, why is RECEPTACLE the most mispelled word in the electricians lexicon? Must be phoenetic.BTW, don't replace 2 prong outlets with three prong unless they are labeled as "ungrounded". This goes for GFIs on an ungrounded circuit. On a home purchase 13 years ago, I found that the home had be "upgraded" with three prong outlets...BUT there was no ground in the outlets. On home inspection, I claimed this was a hidden defect (they looked like grounded to a lay person, but to an expert they were not). Seller paid around $1500 to correct the defect. (We wound up putting in $40k in remodeling, but it helped.)Good luck

4. 
   TP_Bosworth | Jun 02, 1999 08:39pm | #9

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   Adam - you are totally correct on the spelling of receptacle. Thanks for the correction. I hate to make such silly mistakes, but, hey, it happens to the best of us.

   Cheers!
   TPB

5. 
   Guest_ | Jun 02, 1999 08:41pm | #10

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   As has been indicated, simply grounding to the box is generally a bad thing to do. Very few boxes in houses using older wiring are actually grounded, so you end up just giving the illusion of having a ground without actually providing a ground at all - not really a good idea.

   Where you have the walls open, I would agree with the comments that you should probably upgrade with heavier wiring - 15 amp circuits can be somewhat limiting. However, you would need to make sure that all legs of the circuit have the heavier wiring before upgrading to a 20amp breaker.

   In cases where you don't want to open up the wall, you might be able to add the ground wire with much less trouble than having to open up the walls. On my old house I found that my computers would not work correctly unless I had a good ground. I was able to take a long drill bit and from the bottom of the box, drill down at a slight angle through the floor so that I could fish a bare copper ground wire down into the crawl space. I then ran the ground wires back to the main panel. No damage to the walls at all. However, living in California where they never put insulation in the walls made this somewhat easier...

6. 
   JohnK | Jun 02, 1999 10:10pm | #11

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   Allaround has a good point. In my home (built '57) there was EMT everywhere and it was correctly bonded to the service panel. In this case it was acceptable to replace the 2 prong outlets with 3 pronged ones. ( pigtail from ground terminal to metal box)
   Good Luck, John

1. 
   cliffp | Jun 02, 1999 11:29pm | #12

   *Before anyone out there relys on BX armor as an equipment grounding conductor, I strongly suggest that the quality of the grounding conductor path be checked.Even if the work was done properly at the time, there are several ways the ground path could be impaired or completely interupted: corrosion of the armor, loose fittings or couplings, rewiring with romex and improper (or no) bonding of the armor...and this stuff does happen.The best way to check the quality of the ground path is with an impedence tester (using a "SureTest" tester). A continuity check seems OK, but how the path conducts at the low voltage and current (of an ohm meter) is not necessarily a good indicator of how it will carry a heavier, typical ground fault current. I've heard of BX armor that, because of high resistance, has heated up to near red-hot carrying fault current, yet not tripped the breaker for quite a while... For this reason, BX cable has been displaced by MC cable. MC is a metal armor-sheathed cable like BX, with a separate equipment grounding conductor included inside the armor.And Lisa, by all means, upgrade the wiring while the walls are open.

7. 
   Guest_ | Jun 03, 1999 03:10am | #13

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   TP

   I really didn't want to nitpick on your spelling (or anyone else's) but I've noticed it in many places. (when in doubt, "outlet"?)

   A

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 06, 1999 03:09pm | #14

   *Lisa, you probably will spend more for drywall on each wall you update. Spending beau coup bucks on drywall, while living with dangerous wirig just doesn't add up.Get a book, and use this forum for advice. Wire it yourself, and get it inspected. It will add living value, and re-sale value to your house.blue

8. 
   TPBosworth | Jun 08, 1999 11:08pm | #15

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   Fair enough, Dude! No offence at all. Keep on keepin' us honest with a smile, Adam!

   Tim

9. 
   Lisa_Wintler-Cox | Jun 08, 1999 11:08pm | #16

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   Our house was built before grounded wiring was required. We are taking down the drywall in some of our rooms and wonder if the beau coup bucks required for rewiring is important.
   Also, someone suggested using those circuit breaking outlets they use in bathrooms--all over the house instead. Right now we are wavering--most of our plugs are 2 prong--should we just replace them with 3 prongs grounded to the box?
   Decisions, decistions...
   Opinions?
   Lisa