Hi,
My daughter rented an apartment in an older two family house. The receptacles are all two prong except two. What is the safest way to use three prong appliances with this wiring?
The bathroom, believe it or not, does not have a outlet! How difficult (egg, expensive) would it be to add a GFI outlet?
Thanks, Gary
With a tester, see if the screw that holds the cover plate is grounded. One terminal on the screw and one in the small outlet slot. If the screw is grounded, you can use a grounding adapter that plugs in and attaches to that screw. You'll need to contact the building owner regarding installing an outlet in the bathroom
It is neither difficult or expensive. Turn off the circuit breaker or remove the fuse that serves that outlet. Remove the old receptacle and replace it with a GFCI receptacle. Do not use the load terminals on the new GFCI receptacle. Restore power and you are done.
If you want to add a GFCI receptacle outlet to a spot were there is no outlet box now that question cannot be answered without knowing more about the house. Is there a receptacle outlet on the other side of the wall from your desired location?
-- Tom Horne
outlet in a bath. It needs to be on a dedicated 20A circuit (or it can be shared with another bath, for outlets only). As a landlord myself, I always appreciate someone consulting me first before they do (or even plan) any electrical work on my buildings.
JK
Standard answer applies here:
Do not do any electrical work in a building you don't own. I'm not a lawyer, I don't even play one on the web, but odds are you would be liable for any damage, both structural and personal, that occurs because of electrical work you do on someone else's property.
Gather your info, such as a reference that says it's OK to replace a 2 prong-ungrounded receptacle with an ungrounded GFCI, and take it to the landlord. (S)He or his/her representative is the only one who be doing electrical work on his/her property.
BTW - What type of appliances are you referring to? Some appliances should not be plugged into GFCI receptacles. How is the fridge connected now?
The "safest" way is to not use them at all.
The most practical way is to buy a mess of 3-to-2 adaptors. The consumer world existed for 80 years without ground plugs and modern electrical equipment is scads better today.
You have 2 options
1) Replace the circuit breaker with a GFCI circuit breaker. That will take care of the entire circuit. Consult lanlord first.2) If you know which is the first outlet that gets fed from the breaker box, change that to a GFCI and it will protect all other outlets downstream of it. It does not make sense to change every outlet to a GFCI . You only need to change 1 and it will protect the others. Keep in mind if there is a ground fault somewhere, it will kill power to most locations and you have to reset it at the GFCI outlet.
As for no outlet in the bathroom, take off the light switch cover and remove switch and see how many wires are in it. If there are more than
2, than most likely you have constant power in that box. In that case you( or the landlord) can install a duplex switch/outlet combo. And it would have to be GFCI, depending on whether or not it is protected upstream by a GFCI .
I have to disagree. Before I remodeled my kitchen, my fridge has been on a GFCI circuit breaker for years and never had problems.
Just because you've been lucky does not mean it was bad advice.
You may have had good luck but its just not a good idea. GFCIs can nuisance trip. Say you are away for a couple days and that happens. Thats why they specifically recommend not to plug fridges and freezers into GFCI protected outlets.
Good plan, why bother with nuisance tripping of circuit breakers or GFCIs if the frame of a metal appliance should become energized. With the adapters if there is an internal fault that can never happen.
If they are wired that way.
A lot of the circuits I've dealt with around here aren't. There will be one piece or romex from the panel to a junction box above the veiling light, then one going down to each receptacle. No receptacle comes before any other.
Only if the box itself is grounded and the pigtail wire is installed. Plugging 2 to 3 adapter into an ungrounded box does nothing at all to protect against shorts in an appliance.
Harry K
Not to mention two wire lamps. A grounded outlet does nothing to prevent the hot leg from chaffing and causing the metal body from becoming energized
There's a third option: Using a Dremel, saw off the grounding lug on the three-prong plug.
Not uncommon prior to the 70's. They typically used wall mounted lights which included an outlet in the base of the light.
Red
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