All right, I'm feeling mildly dumb and a little sheepish not to mention slightly sick here... just bought a house for the first time less than a month ago, and knew that it had some minor wiring "issues" but now that I'm assessing what I have it appears that there are bigger issues than previously anticipated. Anyway, here's the deal. House is a two story colonial with full basement, built late 1940's. Excellent structural condition, lovely hardwood floors albeit in need of a refinishing. Paid for a home inspection prior to placing a bid on house. Inspector noted some electrical items that would be against code now for new construction but nothing major (things like clothes washer sharing a circuit with other receptacles, lack of GFCIs in the kitchen, etc.) all receptacles in house are three prong type and tested OK with cheap little $5 circuit tester. All visible wiring was old BX w/ cloth covered conductors and inspector said that grounding through the armor of the BX while not the way we do things now was perfectly OK. So I was feeling pretty good about things electrically, and that gave me a good feeling about the house, as I automatically anticipated issues with lack of grounds etc. in a house of this age. Well some of the receps. were a little loose and old looking so I bought a pack of new ones and proceeded to replace them. Basement went fine. Got to the first floor and identified some issues that will be easy to rectify. Then I got to the three oldest circuits in the house, one of which started life as the general first floor circuit and another the general second floor circuit (the latter of which still serves the entire second floor.) The third is a lighting only circuit which serves the lights at the stair landings. It appears that throughout the house wherever the wiring was hidden behind plaster it was run in NM not BX and there is no grounding, period. I don't have a big problem with that on a lighting only circuit but the receptacles installed on the first and second floor are grounding type and it appears that the ground is provided by a jumper at each receptacle between the ground terminal and the neutral. I realize that *theoretically* this is functionally identical, but this isn't the way we do things now, so it bothers me a little bit.
questions:
1) is this actually an acceptable method of retrofitting receptacles to grounded type? I suspect not, but you never can tell.2) if not, is this the kind of thing that would generally be covered by a home warranty? We did spend the $$ for one, although AFAIK it generally only covers things like appliances etc.
I don't blame the inspector for missing this one; he would have had to pull a receptacle either on the south side of the first floor or somewhere on the second floor to identify this issue; there's a lot of wiring visible in the basement but it is all either BX or obviously recently added Romex which does contain a ground, so there was no reason to believe that this wasn't consistent throughout the house. However, the transition from exposed BX to hidden NM seems to be original to the house as far as I can tell; I wonder why that would be?
Any help, thoughts, advice, etc. greatly appreciated.
thanks,
nate
(it's a good thing the girlie was planning on repainting, I guess...)