How To Repair An Open Ground

The circle shows the third prong or equipment grounding slot in a iii-prong receptacle.

What is the equipment ground?

The equipment footing in residential wiring is often thought of equally the "third prong" in an electric receptacle and the third, bare usher in an electrical excursion. Residential wiring systems will function properly without an equipment ground but these conductors make our electrical systems safer by providing a depression resistance path for mistake current to render to the electric panel and trip the breaker to disable a unsafe fault condition. Houses congenital prior to the adoption of the 1962 electric lawmaking rarely had equipment grounding conductors. Virtually of these houses were "2-prong," or "two-wire," system.

What is an open ground?

An open footing is when you accept a three-prong receptacle that is not connected to an equipment grounding conductor. This is unsafe because an appliance that is designed to utilize an equipment footing to discharge an unsafe fault condition will not take a conductor to discharge that fault. Open grounds are common in houses built prior to the adoption of the 1962 electrical code. When old two-prong receptacles are replaced with modern three-prong receptacles and a grounding conductor is not added, yous create an open ground. You can also observe open up grounds in post-1962 houses where the equipment grounding conductor has been disabled for ane reason or another.

Is an open ground unsafe?

A residential electric system is less safety when there is no equipment ground and this condition is exacerbated when you take an open ground. To understand why, visualize plugging in an appliance that has a metal jacket that could exist energized – peradventure an older power tool or vacuum. If that jacket becomes energized the design of the appliance is to discharge that mistake onto the equipment grounding conductor…. simply there is no usher present to discharge the fault. Your chances of electrocution have gone up. This is bad, but information technology tin can be worse. If this same circuit also has reversed polarity, where the hot and the neutral are astern, also a mutual defect, you could at present energize the apparatus jacket just by plugging it in. You would not even need to switch the appliance on to get electrocuted. This is a common electrical safe miracle: 1 thing wrong is a little unsafe but multiple defects can chop-chop escalate into a serious safety run a risk. This exemplifies why it is so important to take even little wiring problem seriously.

How tin can I safely repair an open up footing?

Hither are some options for correcting this relatively mutual trouble.

The first step is to determine if in that location is an equipment grounding conductor present on the circuit. Post-1962 houses are likely to take a iii wire system and the usher has simply become disabled. In this case, you need to diagnose this circuit and observe where the circuit has become asunder.
In houses wired with a 2-wire system, typically pre-1962, you have many different options for repair. I volition review iv of the most common repairs.
- The most obvious and about expensive repair is to re-wire or run new three-wire cables in the house. This is ideal and recommended during renovation work, but is expensive and can necessitate opening upward wall or ceiling finishes. This may not be the best choice unless you are renovating.
- You tin run an equipment ground to the receptacle and connect that equipment ground to any part of the grounding electrode system. This may or may not be easier. Yous are no longer allowed to bond to metallic piping. This is because the ascension of plastic water supply pipes makes it besides easy to inadvertently disable the footing connexion.
- Another satisfactory repair, that is often the most cost-effective is to protect the excursion with GFCI protection. This can be done with GFCI receptacles or with GFCI protected circuit breakers at the electrical panel. GFCI protection is designed to trip a circuit when it detects fault conditions. These are effective and will function properly on a two-wire system. This is an excellent and relatively inexpensive repair compared to re-wiring. Open grounded receptacles that are GFCI protected should be appropriately labeled and this repair will not protect your equipment in case of a surge, and so it is not the best repair for media areas and offices.
- Believe it or not, replacing that receptacle with an older two prong receptacle is considered an adequate repair. This would leave you lot with a 2-prong or ungrounded plug. Non ideal, but better than an open up ground.

I promise this cursory commodity gives some insights into what an open ground is, how it tin be corrected and why information technology is so of import to repair.