What is the easiest way to run ground wires to all the outlets in an old house?
Question:the main panel has been changed and grounded but all the outlets are two prong.
Answers:
It depends on how much money you want to spend and/or how much work you want to do. There are several options, depending on a few things...
You could re-wire the house with new wiring inside the walls, hopefully accessible from the attic or basement. As Richard E. said, this would be mucho, mucho work, and very frustrating, especially if you haven't done it and don't know the tricks. You'd probably end up with a few (or maybe lots of) holes in your sheetrock - two big projects in one!
If it's really old, i.e. if whoever did the original wiring used the BX metal armored cable and metal junction and outlet boxes... and if they properly tightened down their clamps, wires, etc... then the metal outlet boxes themselves are already grounded. You can test this with a circuit tester from the hot plug of the outlet with one probe and touch the outlet box with the other. If this lights up your tester, you just need to figure out how to ground the outlets to the boxes. Test it again after you hook it up to ground, of course. It's possible that metal boxes are grounded even if they used the newer Romex and they just didn't use grounded outlets. It's worth checking, because it's not too hard to fix if that's the case.
If the hard and easy way to get it done above don't do the trick, then maybe the best thing to do would be to totally re-wire the house with the kind of wiring that is routed outside the walls. You've probably seen it before in cabins, quick fab buildings, cinderblock buildings, VFW halls, garages, etc... wiring is routed inside a rectangular conduit. I've usually seen it in a white or almond color, and it doesn't look half bad. I have seen a whole house (a 70's A-Frame) wired like that, and it actually looked kind of cool.
The EASIEST is to surface mount all your ground wires and tuck them in corners wherever possible. Not necessarily the prettiest, though.
no easy way a lot of hard work , you'll have to drill down thru the walls from the attic or up thru the basement probably have to punch a few holes in walls to get by any fireblocking or plumbing obstructions when you pull the wire My suggestion would be to just remove 2prong outlets andinstall 3prong the only problem is gfci circuits (wont work w/out ground) and if you have upgraded your service local codes may require them.
good luck you've got a job ahead of you if you decide to go ahead with it
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