Hi, this is Joshua Peterson with Peterson Electric. We are here in Denver, Colorado for a customer. The question today was that I have a 1950s home what do I do about grounding? It is a great question. This house has copper in it and the bathroom and kitchen have been remodel in the 70s, so it has grounds. Still got the cloth wire. The older parts of the home like the living room and the bedrooms do not have any grounds with the clothe wire. How you know is you got a 2 prong outlet like this verse your 3 prong like this. Right here is your grounding on your 3 prong, but that doesn’t do you any good because if you don’t because if you don’t have a ground wire on this terminal going through the branch circuit to the panel and then to a ground rod it is not going to ground. Technically, when you sell your home, if you are replacing these and you have no grounds then you need to put these 2 prongs back, but some people don’t realize inside of those little metal boxes is what we call a hickey and it screws down and chokes the wire. I have gotten in there and found the ground wire and rewrapped it and once I screw these through this yoke of the device into the box, it grounds it and we put in 3 prong. In this home, half of it is and half of it isn’t. The code in article 210.8 states that in the National Electrical Code that you have to put in GFCIs. Right here this will work as well. You can see we put in a GFCI with a plastic extension ring and a plate. This gets a little costly. It can be about $30.00. Keep in mind, this is the more inexpensive way of doing it than rewiring the whole house. The code does not allow you to run separate from the box if you are trying to get it passed through your city with a permit. I have done it in the pass with wire mold and it does work on the outlets and it will pass for your rental housing inspection like Boulder and Fort Collins, but for Denver as far as under there building permit, it wouldn’t cover it. They will allow the GFCIs, with tamper proof design. The newer ones have plastic tabs inside of all the outlets. This is an older style 3 prong and an older style 2 prong. The newer ones have a TR plastic tabs and that keeps kids pushing into a device and get electrocuted, such as a screw driver, anything or hair pin. Thanks! Hope this helps you out. Give us a call if we can help you out.
