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Adding A Ground Wire To Old Circuits
I live in Colorado in a house about 40 -
45 years old. I am remodeling the basement and the outlets and the light
fixtures are ungrounded.
I have a fair amount of construction experience but I have rarely worked
with electricity. I cannot afford to hire a contractor and I have a
healthy respect (fear) of electricity. I cannot seem to find any clear,
detailed and preferably photographic guides to upgrading the basement
system to a grounded system. Any help you can give would be greatly
appreciated.
Ross T.
All
I have ever done in situations like yours is: replace all the old wiring
with new, grounded wiring. I also replace all the switches and
receptacles, since they cost so little and old ones are usually junk.
Often the old wiring has cracked insulation. The plastics used back then
are nothing compared to the materials we have today. New wire uses an
insulation that can withstand quite high temperatures, about 80 degrees
Celsius (which is around 176 degrees F).
I also replace the metal boxes if possible. Some older boxes are not big
enough and can allow heat to build up.
I am not aware of any practical or legal means of simply adding a ground
wire. Complete replacement is not that difficult. Sometimes I could not
remove the old wire and have had to cut off the old stuff and leave it
in the wall cavity (but ONLY after I have completely verified that there
is no way the wire will be live when the power is restored... this
basically involves finding both ends of the cable and making sure there
are no hidden junctions anywhere that connect to the wire).
There are numerous good books on wiring houses, try Home Depot, Amazon.com
or Taunton Press (which publishes
Fine Homebuilding). I suggest starting with any wires that are not
buried behind walls. The hardest part is fishing new cable through
walls, but all of the good books I've seen have decent explanations of
the process. It can be frustrating, but it can be fun too.
I wish I had the time to show this process on HammerZone.com, but we are
swamped with projects right now. Also, check out HomeTime.com,
they have a good electrical how-to section.
Bruce W. Maki, Editor.
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