electrical code question

[N8N]

I just wanted to check my recollections with those of you more experienced...

if I am mounting light fixtures on old boxes where only hot and neutral is available, the old memory banks seem to tell me that I must either use fixtures made of a nonconductive material, OR run supplemental grounds before mounting metal fixtures.

Is my memory correct?

I know that I *should* run the grounds anyway, unless definitely using nonconductive (porcelain, plastic, etc.) fixtures but I wanted to check to see if I *had* to.

thanks

nate

[Mike rock]

I believe you could also put the light fixture on a GFI circuit as an alternative where there is no ground. You could simply just change the breaker to s GFI type. Most NEC codes allow this.

[N8N]

Hmm, didn't think of that. I knew you could do that with receps, didn't know if you could do that with light fixtures or not. The circuit is in fact GFI protected at this time (mixed lights/receps throughout 1st floor; I installed GFI when we moved in and I discovered that it was all 2-wire. Yes I had to "discover" this because someone had installed grounding receps and bootlegged the grounds to neutral. I fixed that right away...)

nate

[gfretwell]

There is nothing in ther code about this. It only refers to "receptacles" when it talks about replacements. If you can run a ground it will be safer but you are not required to do it for a light.