Electricity: Ground?

[James Sissel]

My house was built in the mid-50s and passed inspection.  It had no ground
wires in any of the outlets and the older plugs that didn't let you know
which one was the hot wire.  I immediately rewired.

Without the ground wire the surge protection will not work properly, if at
all.  If you use an adapter and flip the plug the neutral wire becomes hot.

If you really want to protect your electronics install at least one proper
grounded outlet in the home.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Clinton [mailto:me at jasonclinton.com]
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 8:13 PM
To: kclug
Subject: Electricity: Ground?

Hello all. I'm look at renting an older home in the Waldo area. My question
for the EE's on the list is this: The electrical sockets in the house are of
the older type that do not indicate polarity and do not have a plug for
ground. I would like to know (showing my age, here) what happens if I plug
in a surge protector? What sort of risks am I running plugging my serveral
thousands of dollars worth of electronics in to these things? From poking
around in the basement, tt appears that a three wire electrical wire was run
to some of the sockets in the house. If ground runs in to the socket, does
that mean that I can get ground from an adapter that attaches to the
mounting screw? The land lady said the house's electrical was redone in '91
and passed inspection then... I'm not sure if that tells me anything useful
or not (grandfather clauses?).

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