People Are Adding Deadly Hacks to Outlets
Vložit
- čas přidán 14. 04. 2023
- Bootleg Grounds are a big, big no-no! What to watch out for and how to spot it! #diy #electrical #danger
🎬 CHECK OUT THESE RELATED VIDEOS! 🎬
• The Outlet Has Been Reinvented... And It’s Pure Genius: • The Outlet Has Been Re...
• You're Using the Wrong Screwdriver For Electrical: • You're Using the Wrong...
• 6 MISTAKES DIYers Make When Wiring Outlets: • 6 MISTAKES DIYers Make...
📦 PRODUCTS IN THIS VIDEO AND MY FAVORITE ELECTRICAL TOOLS 📦
You can use the product button in the video or check out these links below.
• Generic Universal Wire Strippers that seem nicer than the Vise-Grips: geni.us/dbXL8
• Leviton Decora Edge Outlets, 10 Pack or Individual: homedepot.sjv.io/Pyy0k6
• Leviton Decora Edge 3-Way Light Switches: homedepot.sjv.io/GmmjqE
• Leviton Decora Edge Single Pole Light Switches: homedepot.sjv.io/JzzrQQ
• Klein #1 & #2 Robertson Insulated Driver: geni.us/94kk0y
• Milwaukee Fastback 6 in 1 Flip Knife (Amazon - Check out the "New From" section on the right for the best deals): geni.us/HgUx
• Milwaukee Fastback 6 in 1 Flip Knife (Home Depot): homedepot.sjv.io/e4ydK
Any link here may be an affiliate link, which means you pay the same price as always but we make a small commission, which helps out our channel - so thanks!
👍 WANT TO HELP SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL? 👍
Become a channel member! Hit the "Join" button or head to / @lrn2diy
Support us on Patreon: / lrn2diy
👕 LRN2DIY SHIRTS, HOODIES & MORE 👚
lrn2diy-shop.fourthwall.com/
📸 MY FILMING GEAR 📸
Here’s everything I use to film my videos, including cameras, lights, microphones and more: kit.co/nilsynils/my-filming-gear
🕶 SOCIAL MEDIA 🕶
Facebook: / lrn2diy
Instagram: / lrn2diy
Twitter: / lrn2diy
TikTok: / lrn2diy
📲 MORE DIY GOODNESS 📲
Check out our many projects and plans at
lrn2diy.com
📲 WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT 3D PRINTING? 📲
All things 3D Printing at The 3D Printing Zone
/ the3dprintingzone
📚 TWO FREE AUDIOBOOKS! 📚
To get two free audiobooks from Audible, just follow this link: goo.gl/QGFC4Q - Jak na to + styl
After 20+ years in the business of renovations I have seen many examples of illegal work arounds. I started doing cursory inspections for friends and family looking to renovate or buy homes in my spare time and I got into the habit of looking for certain "tells" regarding electrical. Yes I did use a basic outlet tester to start with, but I usually started at the panel to see if there was any red flags. I would look for any circuits with old 2 wire cable, 2 circuits on 1 breaker etc. backed it up by pulling covers off of outlets and verifying proper connections of hot, neutral and ground. The older a house is the more interesting it can get and I have seen plenty of disgusting displays of illegal work and not just by DIY'ers with no knowledge but actual Contractors, including licensed Electrical Contractors. Be safe and double check.
Worst house I ever worked on was previously owned by a licensed electrician who told me he had re-wired the entire place just a few years earlier. I found wire nut connections hanging inside the walls, lights mounted without work boxes and even one connection that was just twisted wires buried in the plaster. Nice.
I like how guy never explained why a bootleg ground is a bad idea. When in fact its a great idea. I suspect dude never actually explained this because the arguments fall apart when u realize ground and neutral are tied together at the panel. Its better than nothing and thats why its there. If you find this, dont undo it or replace it with gfci or get a third conductor in there. Allot of NY apartments use the plumbing as neutral and ground
Stephen, I worked from 1983 to 2018 as a designer to Sr. Design Engineer for contractors. My son was buying a house recently and the inspector had concerns about a panel and a 40a breaker on #12 conductors. I got a picture of the panel sent to me and it was extremely weird looking. Breakers on every other slot only. The owner hired an electrician to change the 40a breaker to a 20. My son decided to let the panel go as is to let the sale proceed. (Former boss’s house). Here is what I found. Main panel black and red on 2 pole breaker, white and bare on n/g bar. At the sub panel, MLO, red in bus lug, white in bus lug, black on neutral bar, bare on ground bar. N not bonded. The breakers were all on the bus connected to white. After swapping the black and white at the sub, every receptacle was now wired backward. They were wired backward to show up correctly with tester. Every receptacle that was installed by that contractor at the time of finishing the basement was used when installed. Tabs broken off and screws removed. This was a first for me! I thought you might like to hear about that one. Respectfully, Kevin
@@Wtfincwhy not install a GFCI? That should be safer than even a properly grounded outlet because it will stop current completely if it detects any ground fault. Grounding equipment chassis as a path for fault current is nice, but that won't stop fault current from also flowing through you to a suitable ground.
@@Wtfinc There's a reason why a separate ground is required and in some application there's also an isolated ground (isolating the ground on the outlet from the conduit or box ground). Yes, neutral is bonded to ground, but only at the main service panel/load centre. It gives a separate path from neutral back to the panel because the device that requires a ground typically has a metal chassis. Some appliances, consumer electronics and desktop computer systems have a metal case or chassis of some sort. You cannot rely on neutral for grounding in these cases because you cannot ground with neutral. If you have an incident with reversed polarity and the neutral wire is now live, the risk of electric shock causing injury or death (electrocution) is there. The ground is there for another path back to the panel that would then trip an overload protection (breaker or fuse) or a GFCI/RCD. I would suggest looking at videos by RimStarOrg, Matthias Wandel and Engineering Mindset for further explanation.
The main reason cheap testers aren't going to be able to detect that is because ground and neutral SHOULD be bonded at the 'service entrance' which means that they should often read a short between them, and a cheap tester can't tell if that's in the junction box or at the service entrance.
Exactly, it's not just because "the testers are cheap"
Was waiting for this to be mentioned during the "why" section of the video
@@somedudeRyan You can send down a small high frequency signal down the wires and look how fast (and/or strong) it comes back.
That way, you get a rough estimate of how far away the grounding point is.
A real Ground has at least a few meters from an outlet to the bonding point.
In that sense "the testers are cheap" is correct - if you put in the brains, you can figure out that the connections is centimeters away, not meters as it most of the times should be.
@@sarowie in a video that purports to explain something technical "the testers are cheap" is not the answer to why it shows the wiring is correct. This original comment is the actual explanation. Technicalities are for losers, liars, and advertisers.
@@somedudeRyan Except that it's not a technicality, it's because the cheap testers lack a function and capability that a more expensive device might have.
That makes the cheap testers, cheap.
Doesn't make them worthless or bad, just cheap.
I’m a 26 year electrician. We did a rewire on a house a few years ago that was full of bootleg grounds. An older electrician friend told me that some inspectors advised to do that several years ago. He was smart enough to call them out on it, and they hadn’t thought of the dangerous consequences that could come from it. I can see how that could happen very easily. For those of us in the industry, how many service calls have we been to where a neutral opened up on either a bad joint or a bad device? That’s all it would take is one time, and get someone hurt or lose their life. That’s why the grounding wire is there, to protect YOU from being the path.
What *exactly* makes it dangerous? Don't the ground and neutral lines ultimately connect together up in the main box and in the 3-pronged device as well?
It can't be an electric shock thing due the connections part mentioned already. Is it a fire hazard thing? Or, is it one of those things people *presume* to be an issue, but in practice isn't?
Real questions here. I follow code(because seriously it's not that hard most of the time), but I'm genuinely curious, since no one thus far has given an answer that isn't at odds with what my electrical engineering degree tells me about how electricity works.
@@InfernosReaper The ground and neutral should only make ONE and only ONE connection past the "service point" and before/at the first means of disconnect. If you have more than one, you will create a parallel path for neutral current for every circuit in that structure.
@@G8tr1522 But *why* is that is an issue, though?
It's a pretty simple question. I can *guess* at the answers, but I want someone to actually give something clear and definitive.
@@G8tr1522 no parallel path with a bootleg ground. Cause there is no actual ground going to the panel.
@@InfernosReaper you are right. There is no issue with this besides code. Most old appliances bond the chassis with the neutral anyways
I am so glad that you covered this. I run into this problem so many times and I tell Homeowners that think they are electricians to stop doing this and how dangerous it is. Especially when I get a service call and they say they got shocked holding on to an appliance. It's just not against code, but also against the realstate law here in Texas to sell the home with improper modifications. I just finished as an electrical expert for a lawsuit. The old owner repaired the home himself with no electrical license to sell the home. It tricked the inspector's tools. The new owner was seriously injured by electrical shock in the garage.(no gfci, no ground) Not only did the old homeowner receive a court order to buy the house back, pay all medical expenses, but also all closing and moving cost, because its the law here in Texas.
Keep up the great videos..
The first house I bought in 1976 was built in the 50's. 3 wires were used for all outlets and overhead lights. So far, so good. However, all switches were wired to open the neutral line instead of the hot line. I discovered that simply changing a light bulb became a dangerous situation as most overhead sockets were also wired so that the threaded portion was live with the switch OFF. The solution was to then check every outlet, switch, and overhead fixture and correct them as necessary. (after turning breakers OFF, of course) Luckily, I had the electrical knowledge to do the work myself. An electrician would have charged $ thousands to do the same, based on the amount of time required.
Ya' gotta wonder what goes through someone's mind to make them think that having hot wires all over the place and shutting off neutrals is a good idea.
I was doing HVAC work on a 480v pump that stopped working. Tested it and it was getting 480v, but turns out the circuit breaker was on the neutral side. The breaker opened and that's why it stopped working, yet the pump was still hot. Gotta always be careful and treat every circuit like it's live.
Changing a light bulb is dangerous …….
Ohhhh please ……….
I change light bulbs all the time
With the light on …..
@@thomasschwarting5108 that's the issue... They're not thinking. A lot of people have no idea how or why outlets and switches are wired a certain way. They throw it in. Check it lights the bulb and call it a day. 🙈
@@mycaddigo youre such a badass, i could never do that
A quick and easy check for a bootleg ground is to plug in something that draws a fair amount of current (halogen light, coffee maker, hair dryer, toaster, etc), then measure the AC neutral to ground voltage on the other receptical at the outlet. You will likely get a few tenths of a volt (AC) between neutral and ground if the outlet is wired properly when the load is switched on. The neutral should only be connected to ground at the service entrance, and you will be measuring the voltage drop across the entire neutral wire back to the service entrance. If the neutral and ground are shorted together at the back of the outlet, you will get a very small voltage (a few mV) between neutral and ground when the load is on.
Since I have a multimeter with two prong-leads, that just saved me 400 bucks (assuming I was too scared to shut off the power to my home so I could dissect a receptacle)
can't you just like switch off the power and then measure resistance? If there's bootleg ground, it's gonna be a short between neutral and ground.
@@beardsntools ,
Maybe, if you have a very good DMM. The resistance difference is small though. You might have 0.03 ohms vs 0.001 ohm. And the meter leads themselves might have a 0.1 ohm resistance. You can get benchtop DMM's that can do a "4-wire" resistance measurement that can accurately measure low resistances, but you need a special set of probes (or a pair of probes) and these meters are not something the average homeowner has.
@@jessstuart7495 I think you are underestimating the resistance from outlet to breaker box, 32' 14awg would be 0.14 ohm. The difference should be detectable with a normal multimeter.
0.03 ohm would be around 6' of 14awg.
@@ToxTox ,
32 ft of 14ga wire is 0.081 ohms. (Copper at room temp).
These are good tips. My house was built in the 40s and had an upgrade in the 60s. Attempts had been made since to bootleg grounds, but only in some parts of the house. The rest were two-prongs and were left that way. I did the stopgap measures similar to the way you describe, as some - some of the wire was two strand and others were three! Eventually, we did save enough to get the bad stuff rewired, it did indeed cost just north of 10k. We needed a new breaker box and an external ground 😅 but hey nothing smokes when you plug it in anymore!
The ground and neutral are connected at service entrance to your house anyway. If something smokes, that's something else. Realistically, that neutral wire will have less resistance than your body in a short anyway. Sharing that neutral wire as ground isn't ideal, but it does lead to the actual grounding. The circuit completes, so to speak. Don't get me wrong, I'd take the time pull another wire to a real grounding somewhere and do it properly on initial installation. But to rip open all your walls and spend north of $10k just so that your grounding is connected further away down in the basement to the neutral instead of closeby, is not worth it.
We bought a house in 1992, and the WHOLE HOUSE was wired like that. I wound up rewiring the whole thing. Up side, is that I got to do it all correctly, with appropriate wires, outlets,and separate breakers for the things that needed them. Down side, wife was furious that I was making holes in so many places, as I'm not an electrician with experience in fishing wires through walls. But at least my neighbor (who is a master electrician) approved my work.... but he had still wanted me to hire 'real electricians' to do the job. I just didn't have the spare thousands of dollars to do that, but I still wanted to fix the problems.
Consider yourself extremely lucky. In many places, what you did was extremely illegal (at least as illegal as the hack itself) regardless of how well you did. If an inspector finds out you did that, you could be facing tens of thousands in fines (at least) AND be required to pay a professional to redo it.
@@TheOriginalJphyper even if everything was done correctly?
"Land of the Free", right? 😂
@@LRM12o8 Yes, even if everything was done correctly.
Doing the wiring yourself, hiring an electrician to pull the permit, check it and having an inspector come inspect the work is perfectly legal. As long as you know the code and secure the wires and the connections are correct they won't have an issue with it. Just make sure to leave everything open till the inspector is done.
@TheOriginalJphyper in my city, you only need to pull electrical permits for new circuit breakers or pools, and homeowners can pull it themselves. Sounds to me like your local politicians need to be replaced. The dude had an electrician inspect his work. I really don’t see the problem.
My mother's house was build in the 40s and doesn't have a ground anywhere. I recently just replaced a bunch of outlets and put in ACFI/GFCI combo outlets as far upstream as I could.
Were yours dual function
@@5.43v Dual function ?
@@pudmina GFCI and AFCI are different technologies that do similar things. Dual function would suggest they do both (arc fault and ground fault)
Did you label all of the outlets? That's required by code.
This is nearly compliant with old TN-C european standard (prohibited in new installations). For TN-C your PEN wire would first enter grounding terminal and from it there would be jumper wire to neutral (not the other way around). However modern standards do have PE and N completely separated down to service junction (or even down to trafostation)
yeah, but wouldn't that only be valid at the distribution panel ?
Thank you for bringing this up. We had legitimate sparks at the fuse box, and it was traced down to a ground to neutral when the attic fan was failing. This was the 1990's done deep within the box. It took me around 2 hours in the attic of my parent's 1950's house after reading the NEC. More annoying thing is I had to take apart a double decker box and redoing it all with legitimate WAGO connectors, as he had 4-5 connections with a twist connector in there, including an outlet to an air conditioner. Replaced every outlet (besides fridge due to trips) to AFCI / GFCI dual outlets. After finding this, I found 2 GFCI in the kitchen and outside in the forced open position. Now I use the SmartLock which test themselves and have a visual 'OK' on them, even at my apartment (they had USB outlet in the kitchen, no GFCI and same issue, one in the bathroom was forced in the open position!
At my place farmers often make a "bootleg neutral". Back then they usually didn't wire in a neutral with 3 phase 400 volt outlets and also used 4 wire extensions cords without neutral to save wire. Back in the days it was not a problem, because they just powered three-phase motors for farming equipment like circular saws and grinders for corn. But now modern machinery comes with electronics which require a neutral to get 230 volt between phase and neutral. I saw many times that the farmers themselves rigged a neutral from a 230v socket or even light circuits with a wire or an extension cord to their appliance and then connected the neutral to the power plug. I also saw 3x1,5mm2 cables shoved in the power plug in addition with the existing 4x2,5mm2 so they have the neutral, when I first saw those "double cables"I didn't know what was going on, my dad laughed and said that is the farmers way of establishing a neutral when it's missing.
The same is true for modern "smart" switches for lights and fans that require a neutral. This is why new houses come with a black, red and white wire in a switch box even if an old dumb switch is installed. The unused neutral is just capped.
Another option is to install GFI breakers at the panel. That's going to be my solution. I have a house built in the 50's and it is entirely wired with 2 prong outlets. To rewire the house would be 20% of it's current value. The existing 12-2 seems to be in good shape.
❤I like your idea . That would work if you have circuit breakers, some houses that old have fuses. Just my opinion.
I have the same issue. Thanks for the tip. I'll look into that.
@@jayjudd6518 always change the panel
If you install a GFCI breaker on an un-grounded circuit and then replace the receptacles on that circuit with 3 prong outlets, will a receptacle tester show that it’s correctly grounded?
@@JClishe no wire is still missing but it'll be safe.
For those wondering why a reverse polarity bootleg ground is so dangerous : the ground pin is usually used in circuits to catch any failures that would put live voltage in unitended places (such as metal casings) and would trigger the line's breaker to pop. When the ground pin is tied to the live wire without any actual ground connection, your appliances would become literal electrocution hazards by just touching them. It would be like touching the livw wires directly.
Holy crap
What about reverse polarity but not bootleg? Still grounded outlet.
@@mannyramirez2307That would seem like a normal operating mode for the device, with an exception, that manufacturers can and often do add filters on the live wire connection (mostly appliances with a motor, like a washing machine, but also computers etc.) to filter voltage or current spikes both from and to the grid. If you have a polarized plug and you connect a socket the other way, you basically lose this filtration and bigger manufacturers have laboratories to tell if the fault and damage in your house happened because of this, so you can have your warranty voided just with this simple change.
This "bootleg earth" is a way to give you protection in a situation, when a live wire inside an appliance would become loose, or melt through it's sleeving (like in a metal cased toaster) and touched the case which could lead to a severe electric shock, that would just trip your overload fuse and disconnect this circuit. The absolutely most important thing in doing this is to make sure you've connected the neutral, and not live wire to your ground terminal.
In Poland, when electricians find these earth to neutral connections in all soviet houses and buildings are not obligated to immediately shut down everything, but they ensure that the "zeroing" (that's how we call this "mod") is made, to give the users SOME safety and everyone is familiar with this. That's probably because, our country was pretty much completely blind to the western standards (as all of the soviet union) and after 1989 we were many years behind with these standards, so many, many electricians here do this to this day, but always warn the owner or client to prepare for an installation upgrade. We find some similar "issues" involving weird electrical tricks because of rapidly changing standards even on buildings from only twenty years ago.
To summarize: it's better to connect earth and neutral together (like when you need to change a socket, but don't have the money and time to rip your walls just to add one new wire), than leave it floating and live happily for many years convinced to have quality sockets and just get a shock without a warning some day.
I'm sitting here in the middle of the night, writing comments about wiring sockets, but if you are all so interested in electrical safety, you should definitely think about your AMERICAN MOST DANGEROUS PLUG STANDARD IN THE WORLD, seriously. Just adopt UK's plugs or German Schuko, but get rid of these one hundred years old plugs that are nowhere near the word "safety". You can stick your US plugs like an eight of an inch into the socket, and the prongs get electrified, while your fingers can still slip onto them, or something metal (like a necklace) can fall on them and vaporize. There are so many better desings and this is definitely not worth keeping in the 21st century.
I like the GFCI option as a workaround for a few outlets in the place.
I have a 50's home and I have had GFCI's installed...a few at a time as the money allows. I agree it's probably the best option for most people.
@@Anothertominohio: Thanks for your input on that (even if you did mean " '50s" and "GFCIs" rather than their possessive forms). Yeah, those outlets are pretty expensive, like over $25 per unit, and other outlets can be connected to them, but then to connect other outlets to them means messing around with walls anyway, so unless you're a DIY wall resurfacer then it would still be less expensive per original outlet to replace each one of those with a GFCI. Wouldn't it?
As long as the bootleg ground isn't reversed, it will work just fine. If there is an internal fault that puts potential on the grounded parts of the appliance, it will return through the neutral (aka, return) wire, and trip the breaker in the case of a dead short. It will also collect stray charge from the appliance's ground and keep it at the neutral level (which is bonded with the grounding rod and conductor at the main box).
The problem with not using a dedicated ground conductor is wire resistance coupled with current flow. If you're pulling a lot of current through a long circuit, the resistance of the wire can cause the potential between neutral and true ground to be non-zero at points in the wire far from the box. THIS is dangerous because AC can break through the resistance of your skin (which is capacitive), and pull a current through your body. If your circuit or receptacle isn't fed by a GFCI, the ground conductor does NOTHING except act as a fault-finding return path that can NOT build potential when everything is working normally. It's not as dangerous to go without as people think, but it is a bad idea to use neutral as ground at any point beyond the main box.
A bootleg ground can easily become deadly because if the neutral goes open, current will try to take the path via the ground, meaning the appliance's case will have a 120V potential to ground if the neutral breaks.
This is a problem if the neutral went open at the panel, but that's rare. But if we bootlegged every ground in the house, suddenly every single wire is a risk if its neutral goes open. And open neutrals on receptacles is pretty common - and would electrify the grounded appliance. But only doing it at the panel minimizes the risk.
@@HarrisonFrith-cr4ie The same can be said for a properly grounded chassis if the ground wire breaks.
How is that common at receptacles? You mean it's a common failure? (Since we know it won't work if the circuit is broken). Either way, failure of house wiring is something I didn't cover in my original comment, and a failure of the neutral wire coupled with a bootleg ground would be deadly. I'd say that's the biggest reason to avoid this, by far.
@@RAndrewNeal no it's different. Breaking the ground wire you just lose the ground meaning the case would electrify if there was a fault. But broken neutral with a bootleg ground WILL electrify the casing at 120v even without a ground fault. It is guaranteed to electrify the casing.
@@harrisonfrith7125 Ah yes, I missed that. If the power switch is wired properly, the chassis wouldn't go hot until the switch was closed; but yes, that would energize the chassis through the load.
It's too easy to forget about wiring faults and assume an ideal condition for appliance failure when thinking about grounding. At least, for me.
I just helped a friend replace her two prong outlet with a gfci. When we talked through the options, hacking the outlet like this never even occured to me! Anyway, safety matters!
Was commonly done in germany till the 1970s. Plenty surely still have it that way. And it works.
No, your best option is #4 which is install a GFCI breaker to cover all of the outlets and get rid of those bootstrap connections. Two prong replacements aren't a solution, people will just use cheaters then. A gfci outlet I guess is especially if it's upstream from the others, but it'll be harder to figure that out.
The nice part about "cheaters" is that at that point, the wiring is no longer at fault. It's the appliance. While some people may not be aware that a "cheater" doesn't create a ground, they'll soon learn after their appliance has a fault! What I mean to say is that you can't blame the wiring when you're using "cheaters." That's like blaming the highway when somebody passes on the shoulder.
Using a GFCI and marking the outlet as ungrounded is the correct way to handle it for sure.
But if you don't have grounded plug, chance are that you either have a fuse panel or a breaker panel too old to have GFCI breaker available.
@@Asakha1 Not even. I have an upgrade panel but no grounds because the house is old.
@@Asakha1 Then you install a GFCI outlet
Pro tip - to save on costs on having your home rewired, you can do a lot of it yourself (run the wires, not hook them up anywhere, i.e. let them hang out of the outlets, walls, etc) and then have an electrician come to verify that it's all wired correctly and then hook it up. It's a lot cheaper (fewer work hours).
I'd tell you I'm not doing it, or charge you double because I'd be so frustrated trying to figure out what you did. You're not saving time unless the electrician isn't doing their job.
@@leftyeh6495 - Then I'd recommend people to instead use an electrician who knows how to use a wire tracer.
@@leftyeh6495 I have electricians in my family. They don't mind if homeowners do some of the hard work as long as they do it logically, label things, and are there to explain where each wire goes. If neither of those things happen they do the same thing you do. Gut it and charge double.
Yeah this is not great advice. If anything, it’s backwards. Hooking up the plugs and lights is the easy part, knowing what wire goes where, which wire can go on which breakers, where certain wiring methods are allowed, and how the wire must be run-all of that is why you pay a residential electrician. Apprentices wire up the plugs. If someone calls me to hook up their receptacles and lights then they probably don’t have the knowledge needed to safely run wire. There’s code to follow, there’s “common” sense that comes with a few years in the trade, and Harry Homeowner understandably will know little of it, even if their Google-Fu is strong.
@@abikuneebus Brass terminal = hot
Silver terminal = neutral
Green = ground
Most outlet connections are THAT basic. Taking pics helps, as all you are doing is adding a ground wire....
I've actually seen this a couple of times! I immediately told the homeowner that it needs to fixed and I was done working until it was fixed! It's amazing what chances people are willing to take!
You didn’t mention that the bare copper ground wire and white neutral wire are actually tied to the same bus terminal strip inside the circuit panel. The neutral and ground are at the same potential at the panel and connected separately at the outlet to their respective terminals. This means a continuity check between the neutral and ground connection at the outlet could be very close to zero ohms even though they are separate wires.
My parent's house was built in the 50's and they used what I believe was a precursor to the Romex we know and love today. It had a ground wire, (albeit a thinner gauge than the actual circuit wires), but the common practice at the time was to wrap that around the wire where it entered the outlet box on one end, and the fuse box on the other end and rely on the strain relief to "bond" the ground to the box, bearing in mind that all outlet boxes were metal back then, so as long as the fuse box was grounded and the outlet was actually in the box, it had a "ground", albeit unacceptable by modern codes. As for the "bootleg ground" you showed, if the hot and neutral were reversed, wouldn't even a cheap tester detect such a fault? I don't recall you testing your "reverse bootleg" in the video. PS it would help if you shut off the lights when demonstrating how the tester lit up during the tests, it was hard to see the lights on it with the room so brightly lit up.
Something you didn’t clearly cover specifically regarding the reverse polarity bootleg ground is that it also shows as wired correctly on the common outlet testers. Which you’ll find out about the not fun way when you touch the metal case of something plugged into that receptacle… been there done that. A house I was in had a bootleg ground on a receptacle, somewhere down the line in the branch circuit the polarity reversed. Outlet tester showed wired correctly but the metal case of the PC I plugged into that receptacle was live, which I found out real quick when I touched it. I tend to check receptacles and wiring at boxes with a DMM now to verify that polarity isn’t reversed somewhere else in the branch circuit.
What a great channel you have. Such great helpful content you provide PLUS keeping us safe and possibly saving lives. Thank you very much.
The best option in my opinion is to replace with GFCI unless you are running a higher current motor on the circuit such as a refrigerator. Most residential refrigerators won't trip a GFCI I don't think but commercial grade ones will often have nuisance trips (I'm a refrigeration tech so its an example I deal with often), an obvious problem if you refrigerator keeps randomly not doing the cold thing. But on a cost benefit I think the GFCI outlet would be the way to go, it is a lot cheaper than pulling wire and gets you a good enough for most people result in most cases.
i doubt one of those would enjoy a portable air conditioner which i use to keep cool during the summer months
@@dawn1berlitz it depends on the size of it, a small portable one probably won't trip it but I'm not sure I have never owned one of those but to my understanding they aren't really air conditioning they are an evaporative cooler (often called a swamp cooler). They work great and their amp draw is pretty low so it would probably be fine honestly but even with the commercial refrigerators they usually don't trip every time I have seen them run for hours without tripping the GFCI then all of a sudden you get a slightly harder start and it trips.
I heard GFCI isn't allowed on fridges because spoiled food is more deadly than electric shock risk in this situation
@@thewhitefalcon8539 it is not recommended but not against code, many refrigerator manufacturers will not cover warranty if you have it plugged into a GFCI and that is what is causing the problem. I have had quite a few warranty calls for continental who have "unit plugged into GFCI" on their list of non warranty issues, specifically that they will not cover GFCI trips due to normal operation.
@@keldon_championWould those fridges work with European style panel GFCIs (called something helse like RCD or HFI) that trigger at 30mA imbalance rather than 5mA ?
I grew up in a house in Europe with what they called scheme 0. Everything was 220V 50Hz and fully legal. Every outlet had a ground pin bridged to the neutral wire. Very few accidents and I found in some old homes still approved. Got zapped endless times and on 120V 60Hz it is hardly an issue. But nowadays GFCI's are so cheap I do install one on every circuit.
Why on every circuit? In Europe it is mandatory to put one as the first thing in the fuse box. 1 of 300mA for the entire house, and a 2nd one of 30mA for all the "damp" rooms (kitchen, bathroom,...). What you are saying with the ground bridged to the neutral is not legal. At least not in my country.
@@blackov1466 A DIN mount leakage protector is nearing the $5 mark. So where the DIN standard is used it makes sense, 30mA general outlets, Bathrooms 10 mA.
@@blackov1466 Not legal usually does not mean you need to redo it for things that was built before the corresponding code was introduced. Otherwise you would be rebuilding houses every year
@@blackov1466 There is nothing mandatory "in Europe". Each country has its own rules which like everywhere have changed over time and generally the rules of the installation time apply.
300 mA or 100 mA RCDs are used on houses that use TT-grounding. In Finland TT is not used.
in Finland grounding was mandated on wet rooms in 1930 and it was specifically mandated that if possible to use the neutral wire. In 1957 separate ground wire was allowed with words (or other method). Using the neutral for grounding was banned on new installations in 1989 but one still was allowed to use a 10 mm² (8 AWG) PEN-wire. I have no data but I assume that was rarely used as it required more copper than three normal wires. That was allowed until 2007. In 1997 universal grounding and wet room RCDs were mandated and in 2007 universal RCDs. FiInally in 2023 adding new ungrounded sockets on old installations was banned.
As RCDs are typically put on the panel that makes using PEN-wires practically impossible. You cannot cut the PEN-wire with an RCD. I got a new panel in my apartment ten years ago but as I still have PEN-wires the RCDs were not connected. Of course they did not tell that to me. I thought for years they were in use.
So doing this "bootleg ground" is still legal on old rooms. Tu just need to find sockets that have enough connections for it. Normal sockets have only two neutrals which are needed fro the incoming and outgoing wires. Note here you do not need to do it to use grounded equipment like a computer as anything can be used on an ungrounded socket so the only reason to change is that you actually want grounding.
Here the compatibility issue was old ungrouned equipment on grounded socket and there is no regal workaround short of an isolation transformer. Fortunately such equipment are rare ad it is issue only for collectors. It was a serious issue in the 70s and everyone cut their plugs or used dodgy adapters.
Reversing the connection is a problem and it has caused three fatalities since 1980 - all likely because of illegal DIY. There has been more non-fatal accidents. It seems bathroom, cabinets with a socket are the main problem. Because of this socket testers here must detect voltage on the ground. They have a metal contact you touch and it shows it there is over 50 V on the ground contact.
Te most feared thing with grounding with neutral is that if the neutral breaks the voltage gets to the case. I could not find any report on accidents caused by spontaneous breaking of the neutral. There were some caused by illegal DIY.
In other countries using neutral for grounding was allowed in Germany until 1973 (Klassische nullung). In Sweden it apparently has not been allowed. This is good in that you can install RCDs on the panel of of houses and apartments and instantly get more protection.
In Poland, "zeroing" was the proper and legal scheme until around 1994. Now this connection is called "TN-C" ("C"ommon conductor for neutral and protective earth) and requires at least 10mm² copper conductors. Of course this is impossible for outlets, so one has to use "TN-S" with "S"eparate ground conductor.
In finland this is actually quite common in old houses where the electricals haven't been overhauled. As most of those houses do not have a ground wire to begin with, so sometimes when people have installed new outlets they've just done that.
Yeah, and that's allowed installation for retrofitting. But they European grounded plug can be put in non-grounded outlet. So actually adding bootleg ground is an improvement. Only downside is that you don't have CFGI, but all outlets didn't have that until the latest revision of code.
@@phillipbanes5484 CEE 7/3. I know it's not called "european plug", but it's in use in large majority of european countries so I thought you could make the connection.
It was mandated that you use then neutral for grounding in the 1930 code. The idea was to save copper. In 1957 they allowed separate ground wire but still using neutral was the primary method. In 1989 the use of the neutral was banned but 10 mm² PEN wire was still allowed until 2007. Technically it would still be allowed in a room where there could not be IT-equipment but it would really take effort to find a case where one could use it.
In conversion of old sockets or adding new it is still allowed as long as there are enough connectors. Also any new cable has to be with three wires and one has to make the connection at the beginning of the new wire.
In Germany it's called "klassische Nullung". Decades ago it was the way to go. So we have many old buildings with this system. Here it is standard to put the cables in massive walls or massive floors (concrete or under the plaster). Adding a wire means often to demolish all walls from the outlet to the distribution board. So we have to keep going until the whole building or appartment is renovated.
You just cut a channel in the plaster and then cover it back up. Doesn't take very long.
@@thelight3112 Are you willing to pay it for me?
Penny wise and pound foolish, installing conduits for the wires at construction time is a negligible extra cost which repays in this kind of cases.
Thank you for the GREAT video!
😮Never heard of that jumper thing , thanks for the explanation and fix. I’m now a better DIY-er .
Also, the reverse polarity bootleg is even worse because that receptacle tester will say that it is correct, when it very much is not.
This was pretty common in germany till the 80s or 90s. It's called "classical nulling" here (Nullleiter = neutral).
It even works when you wire in a RCD afterwards.
Today you wire ground (PE), neutral (N) and live (L) separately, of course.
The real danger of course is, when - why ever - the neutral wire gets disconnected but not the livewire. Then you have up to 120V on your ground (or 230V in germany)
Same goes with Russia. We still have those in I'd say most buildings and even standards. It's probably better than no grounding at all.
Literal translation from Russian would be "Protective nulling" and it uses PEN-conductor (PE + N) differently for TN-C, TN-C-S or TN-S systems.
Same in Poland. Although, some genius in my old house hooked up ground wire to... water pipe. So yes, it was grounded but when you washed your hands when the washing machine was turned on, you had a tingling experience.
Common in Finnish kitchens and bathrooms built up to the late 90s, so a lot of them still exist. One downside is that an RCD (GFCI) is ineffective on such a circuit, and from what I gather is therefore not allowed.
I live in Japan and wondered why most plugs don't have a ground, just two prong outlets. After some research, I read that Japan's electrical code is set up around short circuit protection instead of ground fault protection. They operate differently and provide roughly the same protection as proper US outlets. There are outlets that do have grounds where you will need to either pop up the little plastic tab with the ground screw underneath it (and your appliance will need a dedicated ground wire). These are usually near places where a large appliance is located.
I do not know what you mean with short circuit protection. Every circuit is protected against short circuits and it has nothing to do with protecting against electric shocks. It is more like protection against fire.
In Japan many devices come with a separate ground wire that you should fix to the ground screw. Note that everywhere most deices are not grounded but double insulated like mobile chargers, televisions and their accessories etc. Grounding is used mainly on white goods: fridges, washing machines, microwave ovens etc. as well as on computers.
The Japanese system sounds horrible to Europeans but the voltage is just 100 V which does reduce risks.
Here (Australia) we're the exact opposite. Every socket has an active ground pin, though some devices (double-insulated) don't use the provided ground.
We are running 220-240v (depending on which state you're in), 50Hz, and the standard socket is 10A (there are provisions for 15A, 20A, 25A, 32A; all of which have restrictions on the earth pin that make it so you can't plug a device into a socket that isn't rated for it).
While GFCI aren't required for older homes, new ones do require them to be fitted as standard. All work on Australian home electrical systems must be signed off by a certified electrician or the house is considered unsafe.
US GFCI detects around 0.004A of ground fault current. Typical Japanese circuit breaker is 30A (US houses do always have a similar circuit breaker in addition to GFCI as well). That is more that enough to kill a person at 110V if their skin is not dry, and give a nasty shock if it is. You still need to attach a wire between those ground screws and metal frames AND install a GFP into your mains breaker box if you don't want to die from a faulty appliance that easily.
Many older dryer and stove 120/240 volt systems used the neutral as a ground as well. Both neutral and ground connect together at the panel.
Yes, the NEC allowed this exception from the '50s until 1996. New construction and new outlets are to be 4 wire. The NEC has "Grandfathered" the 3 wire method, until such an outlet is rewired.
A 240vac circuit doesn't require a neutral so common practice is to use the neutral white line of a 6 or 8/3 line as ground. The newer machines do require a 120 circuit for low voltage displays etc etc however so hence the four wire installation requirement which basically just includes the central tap from the transformer and utilizing it along with a single leg of the 240 vac circuit to create a 120 circuit
@@fredmauck6934 check the local authorities for the code revision they are using,
I know one county that adopts the IBC, NEC and plumbing codes shotly after they are published,
another nearby county is still using the 1993 code
@@tylerdurden3537 Dryers almost all universally use 120 volt motors, with 240 volts being reserved for the heating elements. That way so dryer manufactures can use the same motor for a gas dryer or an all electric one. Plus it allows dryers to run on 208 without risking overheating the motor's as a lot of apartment blocks are supplied with 120/208 rather than 120/240, or very rarely some farm houses or the odd cases where a large property needs three phase power for one reason or another. Stoves accessories likewise run off 120, likely for the same reasons to maintain parts commonality with gas and compatibility with 208. Also apparently some older model stoves used to have 120 volt convenience outlets.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 excellent points here, I never quite understood why couldn't dryer manufacturers simply install 240V motors so that you could plug the dryer into a NEMA 6-30R, for example and you wouldn't have worry about the old 3 wire vs new 4 wire configurations. As for ranges, manufacturers could have spent a few extra dollars for a 240/120 step down transformer to power the oven light and electronic controls so the stove could operate without a neutral and plug into a NEMA 6-50R
As a home inspector - this video is very helpful. TY
Ground tied to neutral has been standard practice in much of Europe because old buildings generally only had two-conductor wiring. Today it is illegal, but millions of buildings still have this situation.
In the rental properties i work on where inspectors bring this up the solution 9/10 times is add the GFCI plug and label it.
Usually it's cost prohibitive to rewire the outlets or they're on exterior walls that are next to impossible to fish without opening the walls up.
And that is where installing conduits for the wires comes in handy.
@@apveening Landlords are too cheap for that. Lol
@@evictioncarpentry2628 Their problem, it will cost them extra in the end.
@@apveening Oh I know that haha. They never learn that lesson though.
i was quoted 14k to fix 10 plugs that dont have grounds on a house built in 1909, updated in the early 80s. its good to know i could get CGFI's put in, i wasnt made aware of that
I once worked for a company called Dish Network, may have heard of it. Went to a house full of "electricians". Said they ran my cable ahead of time, great news. They also wired their house outlets. Luckily I have a tester, and one of their rooms was wired reverse neutral, hot ground. I refused to plug anything in, they did it instead. Their tv blew a hole in their HDMI when they tried to plug it in. Now I'm studying to become an electrician, and this explains a lot
I have a house built in 1955, and it had the main service running from the weather Head across the top of the front door, and it was frayed, i thought just that could be replaced, but no it had to be brought up to code, 8 thousand dollars later, new service from pole, weather head ,meter pan, circuit breaker box and breakers, i also went with whole house overload protection,this house does have some two prong outlets, but all the others were already upgraded to 3 prong and the power is much more reliable after those updates
Another option that may costly but not as much as rewiring everything, is to run a single ground wire to all locations that are missing it. Although if you do have to open up walls, you may as well put all new wire.
This option is heavily frowed upon. It might even be against code.
It is a code violation
@@TheRobWay1. Gosh. I have that problem in my house and I was about to ask about that since I read the first comment. Is 100% sure this is a code violation?
That means the green wire needs to be inside the Romex wire in order to be up to code?
Thank you.
The equipment ground must be run with the unbalanced conductors per code. In theory, it does work, but it doesn't offer a ground fault path for the unbalanced/hot conductors.
@@NSilver832 NEC 250.134(2) this is the code reference... if there is an exception, I didn't see it at first glance.
Good video that shows a not so common problem.
But there are a couple misconceptions. The tester showing correct (two lights on) just means the tester detects that both the neutral terminal and the grounding terminal both lead to the neutral at the source. (Main panel or meter base with main breaker).
So the $400 tester is likely not going to catch this mis-wiring either. To both testers, the terminals lead to the correct paths. The problem here is where in the electrical system the grounding conductor and the neutral are connected together (in this case, at the receptacle). In any system, they should only be connected together in one spot, at the beginning where the main disconnect is at.
*EDIT* So turns out the $400 does know where the bonding occurs by measuring impedance so it will help to distinguish if it is indeed a bootleg ground. Thanks to sparky below
Actually the $400 tester can detect false grounds by measuring the impedance between neutral and ground. Below a certain threshold e.g. jumper between the neutral and ground screws on the outlet the tester will flash an F over the ground to indicate false ground. In a properly wired home with modern wiring the ground and neutral only connect at the main panel, nowhere else, giving a higher impedance between neutral and ground at outlets.
This just helped me tremendously. THANK YOU
The GFCI solution sounds the best (in Australia we call them RCDs and they are mandatory on any house being sold or rented).
My house, built in the late 40s to early 50s, half the outlets were wired backwards polarity, no ground, but all sockets were three prong. I've been correcting them all as I go. I mean even the electric wire was color coded incorrectly, black and white would be hot or neutral or vice versa.
I just moved out of a house like that. The noise through my guitar amp was unbelievable, so I started checking outlets. Almost every outlet was backwards with no ground wire. 1 outlet in my bedroom was backwards with ground so I fixed it and plugged the amplifier and pedals Into that and things got much quieter.
I couldn't believe that every outlet was wrong. I'm pretty sure mine had ground because it was added later, as well as a couple of outlets in the kitchen. Other than those, nothing had ground. The house was renovated before I moved in so I'm sure that's when they got put in backwards because they all had 3 prong outlets and new covers, etc...
I moved in Jan 2022 thankfully. The house I bought has modern wiring so my amp is dead quiet these days. The first time I tried it when I was moving in, I was very surprised at how quiet it was. 1st time I heard it that low.
Mine is in a similar situation, some outlets even have same color wires for hot/neutral lol
I needed this and plenty more electrical knowledge
Excellent video to learn Thank you.
Been in the business since 1985 and never saw this. That truly is a hazardous situation. The disposal and refrigerator outlets would be a high priority to check.
Genuinely want to know why it’s dangerous to connect a neutral to the ground at the outlet? All the neutrals and grounds are connected inside the service panel. Why is it hazardous? Is it a function of resistance through one wire vs two?
@@stephenroberts4155 because you become the ground, versus your ground rod which is bonded to neutral at panel.
@@REALBanannaman that doesn't make any sense at all. no matter what, the resistive path would be identical to the ground rod. In assume a run 50ft from the panel: case A, normal. Resistive path from the ground pin goes down 50ft of ground wire, hits the ground rod; case b, bootleg ground, Resistive path goes from the ground pin, up 1 inch, down 50ft of neutral wire, hits the ground rod.
I would say its better than installing grounded outlets with no ground connected, but its still not good.
@@X4Alpha4X If there is no problem with the wiring, it should work. However, if a problem develops in the neutral, your ground will have the same problem with potentially very unpleasant consequences. And if the polarity is reversed, your "ground" will be powered.
Great video. I’m sure it was pointed out already and I know it’s just for demonstration but you put a 20 amp GFCI receptacle on 14AWG Romex . But thanks for the info regardless. I’ve never heard of this illegal hack.
The code doesn’t stop you from connecting 14awg to a 20amp device. It does require, in this instance, a beaker no larger than 15amp
Very informative video. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent! Important information thank you!
You can also just get a two pole voltmeter with a continuity test mode, like a Duspol, to test continuity between ground and neutral. You don’t need an extra special outlet tester for this.
Can't*
Isn't that exactly what all those basic meters are doing?
Ground is literally screwed onto the same place as Neutral in the main breaker box. If there is no continuity between your Ground and Neutral, Tere's a problem (99% of the time).
I guess you could test for resistance but even that's a bit of a stretch.
We have called them a "dead-man jumper", and it is way more common than you think in older homes that did not have the 3rd ground wire throughout, known as a two wire system compared to newer 3 wire system. People will replace a 2-prong receptacle for a 3-prong receptacle and install a dead-man jumper to complete the ground. Very dangerous for you and any equipment plugged into it. That ground is now sharing all the current going through on the neutral, creating a very dangerous shock hazard which could lead to electrocution or fire.
And where do ground and neutral go outside of your house in North American wiring ?
@@dmitripogosian5084 Standard residential will have a 240v service. 120x2. There are three wires that will come from the pole to the house L1,L2,N going to the service panel. At the house there will be a solid ground rod in the ground to attach the ground wire to the service panel. At this point ground and neutral are bonded together. For the inside panel there will be 4 wires from the service panel. L1,L2,N,G. On the interior panel the neutral and ground are then separated to there own buss bars and not bonded together. Neutral will be insulated from the metal panel. The ground buss will attach to the metal panel. All ground wires will then be terminated at the ground buss and all neutrals wires will terminate on the neutral buss from each circuit. Hope that helps answer your question.
@@jonesgang Thanks a lot ! Last summer I was looking at my cable to the pole, consisting of insulated cable hanged on uninsulated stranded metal line, and noticed that the metal line has only one strand left intact. I always assumed it is just a mechanical support for the cable, but when electrical company came to repair it, technician said it is actually my ground (and now I am confused, maybe he said it is neutral ? ) . Anyway, after new segment was spliced into the damaged part, my lights stopped blinking when dryer was starting :)
@@dmitripogosian5084 All power wants to return to its source. That bare metal wire is the return/neutral/ground. If you only had a strand or two and the rest broke or chewed you were having some funky issues in your house. Lights would dim or they would get really bright or major brown out of power from time to time all sorts of fun stuff. Glad you got it fixed. If you have lost that wire all together you could have sent 240 through every 120 circuit. Crazy fun stuff!!
@@jonesgang Fun part I lived with it probably for over a year, thinking it is just mechanical. Given that this cabling is electrical provider responsibility, they came within half an hour of my call, looking worried :)
I learned something new- thank you!
One thing that often doesn't get mentioned with a bootleg ground - it's worse than the abscence of a ground. If the neutral wire in the wall breaks or falls out, the ground pin will become live with 120V because the current wants to take a path to ground via the ground pin as it's jumpered to the neutral which has gone open, meaning the case of the appliance becomes electrified!
The whole reason we bond ground and neutral ONLY at the panel and NOWHERE else is because of the deadly consequences of a neutral going open on a bonded ground. We only do it in one place to minimize the risk of this happening. But if it's done on every outlet, a neutral break in ANY wire will cause the case to become live on the appliance. Which is FAR worse than not having a ground!! It's a "fail-deadly" fault.
That's really the only way this becomes hazardous as far as the outlet is concernde, which is why you can get away with it, well, basically forever, and not have any issues, but also could get away with it until you use it the first time. Important to not over-state risk, most of code is accounting for potential failure modes, and some of those failure modes are absurdly unlikely.
To me, the real danger presented here is a faulty appliance, not a faulty wire in a wall, so the code accounts for some failure modes there, but, if you happen to have an appliance that's bad enough, well, you want some form of GFI to bail you out because even good wiring wont save you from something that loses it's internal neutral connection and also isn't grounded properly. Sounds outlandish, but, chinesium abounds and "CE" doesn't mean it's safe.
@@jttech44 The neutral failing inside the appliance wouldn't cause the casing to become live as there is no bond inside the appliance, so the current is not trying to get out via the case. It's if a neutral fails upstream of a ground neutral bond that you get this issue. If the neutral went open internally the appliance just wouldn't work.
I've also seen quite a few outlets where a space heater has been used and has burned up the (slightly loose) neutral on the socket, causing it to go open. That would have caused the 120V case fault described here if it was bootlegged.
@@HarrisonFrith-cr4ie Space heaters really are a plague on the earth tbh
That simply is not true. I checked the electrical fatalities in Finland since 1980. There were no fatalities caused by breakup of the PEN-wire. There were six because of non-existent or broken grounding and three because of reverse bootleg ground. Note PEN-wires are normal in the time period most homes had them wheres using ungrounded sockets on dangerous locations was abnormal.
Properly installed wires do not spontaneously break.
@@okaro6595 Read about it if you want to understand more. There's a reason we separate ground and neutral. The PEN to the house breaking is only a problem in TNCS and TN-C installations, but it will cause objectionable voltage to flow on the grounds.
If I saw this, I’d be really tempted to call a lawyer. It’s pretty likely the whole house has been intentional wired to deceive, and may need a lot of repairs.
be almost impossible to prove the previous owner did it. Most people own a home 5 to 10 years max and we're talking 1970"s back. MIGHT get the inspector if you paid for an inspection.
@@williambrennan5701 In addition, the central question for torts is "what loss is being claimed?" Just doing something that might have terrible results is not a tort; all that could be claimed is the cost of removing the bootleg grounds. The lawyer would be a lot more expensive than that.
The houses in the 40s had grounds originally provided for kitchen, bath, laundry, but not living rooms and bedrooms. Often the ground was a single wire run beside the double. I found it easy to fish a single #14 wire to the ones that I needed a ground in. Regarding this video, odd that you switched a 15 amp outlet with no ground to a 20 amp GFCI. I know many people who think that a 20 amp outlet is better quality innards (true) so why not splurge, but they forget that with only 15 amp (#14) wire, the t-slot allows a 20 amp appliance to be plugged in. Not safe long term, nor code.
Name a single 20 amp appliance you have in your house without lying.
And your dad's old circular saw from the 1960s that will never be outside of the garage (and probably never actually be used) doesn't count.
@@joshuaewalker There are plenty in the world. Especially commercial floor polishers, and high power microwaves. I have the latter. But even if there is only one in the country, the code is the code!! An "instructional" video should never show violation of the code. Outlets are designed to restrict the size of plug to put in, based on the capacity of the wire in the wall. You cannot plug an electric stove into a dryer outlet, for a good reason.
Plug a 20 amp appliance into a 15 amp circuit and all that will happen is the breaker trips. This is a non issue, though it would be obnoxious
@@rtel123
High power microwaves that plug into 20 amp outlets are generally (99.99999% of the time) an installed appliance (built into the wall or above a stove/range), not a countertop appliance. You're not going to be taking your 1600w microwave out of the wall and carrying it to another room and plugging it into a 15 amp circuit that has an incorrectly installed 20 amp outlet.
@@joshuaewalker Irrelevant. Code is code! An advisory video should not show a code violation as advice!
This is so fitting. I was JUST LOOKING at the wiring in my 1949 house today. There’s a bunch of much newer three conductor wiring in my house…but if you follow them into the box they’re just connected to the neutral buss anyway.
Should I perhaps get a ground rod and install it just outside my incoming service and move the grounds to it? I do a lot of high voltage electrical repair in my shop and I would really like to make sure I have proper grounding.
Neutrals and grounds go to the same place in a main panel.
They're bonded in the panel but separated in the wiring for good reason. It's complicated, but everywhere ground and neutral is bonded means that if the neutral on that conductor breaks the ground will become live. Doing it at only one place minimizes the risk.
Excellent video. Thanks.❤
The neutral (white) and ground (bare) wires are bonded in the main service panel of your home.
And nowhere else. Ground is exclusively for safety - in the event that there is a short in an appliance or fixture that causes its chassis to become energized. If you bond neutral to ground at the receptacle, ground becomes meaningless.
@@wallyballou7417 That doesn't make sense. Since the return and the ground are going to the same place, if the ground is connected to the return on the back of the receptacle and a short energizes the chassis, it will be a short back to the panel and the breaker blows (standard breaker is only on the hot so the breaker doesn't care where the return current goes).
Plus Kirchhoff's voltage law stipulates that two equal lengths of wire, one to a voltage source and the other to a voltage reference point (for example, ground) connected together will have half the source voltage at the connection point. (Here each wire acts as a resistor (very low resistance, but a resistor none the less) so the connection point is in the middle of a voltage divider. So in the brief time before the breaker blows, here in the US the chassis should have a voltage of about 60Vac, not 120Vac no matter if the return current is on the white wire or the ground wire.
@@Sembazuru Don't take my word for it, check the NEC. It's very specific about this.
Electrically Chris is correct, Code wise Wally is correct.
Current should never be flowing on an Equipment Grounding Conductor except to clear a ground fault.
In an ideal scenario electrically it doesn’t matter the return path as long as it trips the circuit protection.
Thermally we don’t increase EGC for high temperature situations, and once we go above 20A over current protection we start reducing the relative size of our EGC. So if you have a 50A circuit with #8 wire you only are required to have a #10 EGC per Table 250.122. If we’ve bonded neutral and EGC at our receptacle… then we now have a #10 in parallel with a #8 and are majorly exceeding the current capacity of that #10 that is only rated for 35A. We then have a situation where we can overheat that #10 without ever tripping the overcurrent device.
@@Sembazuru it does if you factor in modern circuit protection a GFCI device has the active and neutral run through a coil if there is the same power on the active as the neutral they cancel each other out but if one is higher than the other a voltage is generated and trips the device. Now if you bond the ground (no ground wire) and neutral at the outlet in a fault all power that goes to ground ends up returning on neutral defeating the GFCI. This is why the system was done this way the 10 to 30ma will hurt but most people will survive it but 16a or 20a that a fuse or breaker needs to trip is generally a death sentence also those device can allow upto 10x their rated capacity in a short situation so a 20a breaker could see you get 200a
Every time I discover something about US electrical installations, I still never cease to be horrified.
My cousin's house, built in 1950, has some 2-prong outlets and some 3-prong outlets. I know what I've going to be doing when I go to visit her next week! Thanks for this very important video!
that era is what some in the electronics field refer to as the "Hot Chassis Era" where most electronics were vacuum tube or hybrid tube & transistor devices that did not have a power transformer but power resistors to drop voltages down and also typically the tube heathers would be series string. The metal chassis would be tied to one leg and the other would be switched and the plug was not polarized. The main push to polarized grounded sockets came with the microprocessor and home computer era in the late 70's onwards to today.
We had a record player that had capacitors from each leg connected to the chassis. Not nearly as dangerous, but regardless of which way the plug was connected touching the record player and any grounded thing produced a bite.
I was installing stereo equipment back then, and I could feel the difference by lightly touching the case (which were metal back then). If I felt a bit of tingling, I would reverse the plug and the tingling would be gone. I always instinctively knew that was right, without actually learning about it from anywhere.
There are enough countries with unpolarized grounded sockets and microprocessors and home computers handle that just fine.
Those radios are really dangerous. In Europe they cannot be used on grounded sockets as you would not want anything grounded next to it. Polarized plugs have nothing to do with microprocessors. They are used on lamps etc. to ensure that the switch breaks the phase and not the neutral.
Wow!!! Why is there so much shady workmanship? Our house was built within that range. 🤦🏾♀️
Right? It's a bit scary what people will do sometimes.
It's not necessarily shady, it's usually ignorance. Uninformed people think the neutral can be used as a ground.
People do it to be able to use modern things they buy in older buildings. My daughter apartment in 70 building has all kitchen outlets on the same 15 amp line. What can you do, you have to live with that
This sort of thing always makes me glad that I live where I live. While it is common to plaster twin and earth straight into the wall, we generally have concrete walls with conduit running from the roof space. Pulling in an extra earth wire is less than an hour's work.
Yeah, where you live, you use 220 volt, which will kill you.
Yes, NEC prohibits bootleg grounds. If installed connecting to the L2(neutral), it only poses a potential problem with GFCI outlets. All neutrals are bonded to ground back at the circuit breaker. Neutrals are equipment ground. The extra dedicated ground only serves as a means to provide a low resistance path to ground out the casing or exposed metal components of devices that plug into the outlet; This protects the operator from becoming the path to ground.
Again, the neutral wire is bonded to ground back in the circuit breaker. It is perplexing to think that electrical outlets worked just fine before dedicated grounds were added(sarcasm). Neutral=ground. Of course, always follow the NEC or whatever organization governs electrical codes in your area. Having a proper dedicated ground doesn't hurt anything, and can add extra safety. Although, it does add to the cost......
Btw, if safety truely was the goal, then running a dedicated ground AND bootlegging the ground to neutral would technically be even safer! By running the neutral ground in parallel to the dedicated ground, the total wire line resistance to ground would be effectively cut in half, further reducing the current that might flow through a person by increasing current in the now lower resistance path to ground.🤔
Yes, having a dedicated ground would cut the resistance to ground technically in half; However standard 12 gauge wire has 1.6 ohms per 1,000 ft at 77 degrees F. The shortest electrical path that can be lethal, invloving your hands, is hand to hand or hand to closest foot. Hanad to hand is roughly 2,330 ohms. Hand to closest foot is roughly 1,300 ohms.
(2,330^(-1)+1.6^(-1))^(-1)=1.599 total resistance. Max peak voltage of 120vac is roughly 170v. 170v/1.599ohms=106.323A total current flow. Current through the 1.6ohm nuetral/ground would be 170/1.6=106.25A leaving .0731A or 73.1mA. Anything over 30mA can cause the heart to stop.
Oddly, cutting the resistance to ground in half by having a dedicated groud would result in total current being 212.573A with 212.5A running through the two grounds, leaving .073A flowing through the person in parallel. Still enough to stop the heart. So there is virtually no difference between having just a nuetral ground and also having a dedicated ground.
A couple years ago after I got my own place I was helping my mother refinish my old bedroom, helping to paint and replace discolored outlets and such. Now, my mother's house was built in the 50's and is wired very strangely. There's 3 bedrooms, and one breaker controlls the ceiling fixtures in all 3 bedrooms plus one switched outlet and one regular outlet in each bedroom and another breaker controlls the remaining 2 standard outlets in each bedroom. (That's not rhe only weirdness, but the rest would take too much time to run through)
Now, at some point in time, the circuit running the lights (which also ran the switched and one non switched outlet in each room) was properly upgraded with 3 conductor Romex, along with most of the rest of the house, but there were two circuits in the house that were still 2 conductor, one of which was in the bedrooms running the other two outlets. The second ungrounded circuit was easy enough access because of how it was routed that a family friend who is also a licensed electrician came out and did the upgrade for us for not much of a cost above materials, but the bedroom circuit would have required removing drywall all the way from the garage in one corner of the house where the breaker box was to the bedrooms in the opposite corner, and that was well above the time and monetary cost we could afford at the time. My mother was asking me to just install the three prong outlets in and don't bother with grounding them ("I'd know that they aren't grounded, its not an issue") to which I flat out refused, but I did agree to installing a GFCI on the circuit and daisychaining the downstream outlets to protect them all, then putting the No Equipment Ground sticker on all the outlets. So, long story short, I'm glad to know that I did indeed do the correct thing given the situation
That could be "very lethal." That's dangerous alright, but ordinary lethal is not too bad!
Neutral is usually 0V when not under load. The ground is for safety in case of a short internally. I bet if you plug in a hairdryer to the other plug (1500W) and put your outlet tester in, you’ll have it show that the socket is wired incorrect. This is because now the neutral will be above 0V due to voltage loss in the wires.
No under load a neutral still measures as 0v
@@shaynegadsden It will not be 0V under load but it will be very low. 12AWG wiring has ~0.007 ohms/ft so on a longish run of say 70ft you could get as much as 0.5 ohms, which at 10amps gives you 5 volts. That's worst case, typically see a volt or less so it takes sophisticated tester to detect it.
@@jiml5837 it is zero a $700 fluke is classified as a sophisticated tester, i know what you're saying but the method here will never see that. The only way to see that voltage is to probe both ends of the neutral while it's loaded, every test you could perform at that single point will show as 0v.
@@shaynegadsden
No.
Depending on the resistance on the neutral conductor, voltage between and ground can be present.
I've measured upwards of 3V on occasion. And thats on circuuts with no major problems like a poor neutral connection.
Electric current flows on ALL available paths. Not just the path of least resistance.
@@benjurqunov in any of this have you seen mention of an earth, No because the lack of an earth is the reason for this problem
this was the norm here like 20 years ago when my house was built, the ground cable is there in like half the outlets and i rewired those i could but there's still a few
As I remember, ground wires connect to the neutral bar in the electrical panel. Am I wrong?
You’re correct and that’s called bonding and is there for our safety to create a ground fault current path. The bootleg ground directs that path to the appliance or to us instead.
You can only have 1 bonded neutral in a circuit which is at the panel so doing this hack creates 2 which from what I understand if there is a fault, instead of it going back to the panel and tripping the breaker part of the current can go to the hacked bond on the plug and not trip the breaker which is where the problem arises.
@@LRN2DIY Thank you for explaining this. I didn’t know. I have learned from LRB2DIY and likely been saved from injury. A happy subscriber.
@@Mixwell1983 Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me and in a professional way. Thanks for looking out for your fellow man. Blessings to you.
In Europe it's very common to have ungrounded outlets, as most countries only requires ground for bathrooms, kitchen, washing machines etc. where water is near. It is required to have HPFI (GFCI) in our breaker panels, which then protects every single outlet in the house. The ground is only there to avoid the case where you can have a live chassis on a washing machine because of the live wire touching the chasis. With it grounded and the HPFI (GFCI) at the panel, this would instantly detect fault current and turn off the power.
What? Ungrounded outlets are almost non-existent in most of Europe. I live in Czech Republic and only ungrounded sockets I've ever seen were 2-pole flat ones (type C) and ones wired to isolation transformers at work (factory). Even those 3-pole wired with 2 wires (old TN-C installations) are grounded via PEN conductor, btw in those cases the PEN wire goes to the PE/ground terminal first and then to N terminal (inverse to what was shown in the video).
Maybe in some of the most primitive backward European countries, not so where I live.
@Phillip Banes basically all of scandinavia, germany and more. Especially older houses, tho never houses now tend to have 3 pin outlets with earth connection now. We have earth in bathrooms, kitchen etc. but most other places theres no earth in older buildings.
@@WolfGamerBohumin Czechoslovakia was the first country to mandate universal grounding in the 1930s. In most countries only wet room outlets were grounded. Universal grounding was adopted in many countries only in the 1990s.
I have them all over my house. It was how I was taught to do wiring. Dad always said if you don't have a ground bridge the ground & neutral. Today of course I'd use a gfi, but back in the 90s gfi's were pretty expensive.
Great idea for a video. Many DIYers may not know this.
I worked for a electrician 50 years ago and he had me do that house still there and nobody hurt
I have always wondered, "Which is more likely to happen? A short in the appliance, or a fault in the neutral line going back to the box." I feel safer having a bootleg ground than I do when I see a 3 prong adapter being used that has the pigtail flying in the air. (I hadn't watch the full video when I made that comment. The GFCI marked "No Equipment Ground" option looks like the best option.)
Good stuff thanx!
UK here (& not a professional electrician). Here in 🇬🇧 we have 230V AC supply & extremely strict regulations as a result. All modern installations *have* to have an Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker (ELCB) fitted which trips at 30mV. This bootleg ground hack wouldn't work in UK as the path from neutral to ground would trip the ELCB & it couldn't be reset until the neutral/earth path had been removed.
Obviously you're in 🇺🇲 & regs will be different but are ELCBs not mandatory?
We bought this older home built around 1960 eight years ago. Many of the outlets in the home were wired like this. I left the 3 prong outlets in but removed the cheater. I recently had a GFCI breaker installed in my main breaker panel by a licensed electrician and have labeled the outlets. (This is exactly what Bern Litzner is recommending below).
Could you possibly test for this by turning off the power and doing a 3point multimeter check?
wow I heard of bootleg grounds but never seen them. that's next level of hack
Very few things use a ground wire here in Brazil, it's not really dangerous.
So I had a question about breakers and whatnot. In my house, we have about 6 outlets hooked up to a single switch in our breaker box, which is causing issues as these six are split between two rooms both running a lot of tech. This has caused the breaker to trip at least twice, is there a way to have an extra switch put in and have 3 of the 6 outlets hooked up to that one instead and about how much should I be looking at spending? I live in Michigan if that changes anything.
I had no idea that people were doing this sort of thing. Now, I will know to look for those in a home as an electrician.
Whoaa, that reverse-polarity situation is even worse!
Shocking, one might even say... In my house, a reverse wired outlet with a bootleg ground would instantly trip the breaker when it got energized- the metal boxes in this (built in 1961) house are tied into ground.
Thanks for letting me know!
Relying on one of the prongs being at a neutral potential I just find insane.
I know they are phasing in TN networks more and more here, but they still treat the sockets and outlets as having interchangeable prongs. Traditionally we run IT network where both wires coming to load are active and cycling and usually 2 of 3 phases entering the home. A different room would then have two of the 3 phases as well, but not necessarily the same two.
Earth/Protection/PE is then always treated correctly as you can not fake it. Equipment not needing grounding can then use a plug that works for both grounded and non grounded outlets and you can't just brake off the ground pin on equipment that needs it to make it fit a non grounded receptacle.
If you want a jumper in the right area, you could have placement progress with the outlet location as in the opposite side of service trip panel. Close knit and still separated loop.
What you have described at 1:40 is basically Klassische Nullung in Germany. For a long time we also just had 2 wires, L1 and N. In ~1960 the PE wire was added, this was called Moderne Nullung(modern zeroing, since it doesnt depend on the N being responsible for PE), but beware, some houses do have 3 wires, but sometimes there is an outlet beneath a switch, meaning it is also just 2 wires(basically the lamp has already been wired with N and is waiting for L1 to complete the circuit, a 3 wire cable is used, the L1 is clamped to the switch and to the outlet, the PE is being used as a way to control the L1[basically L1 is going into the switch and needs a second path to go to the lamp, meaning the PE is being used for L1], so that means the only way to connect the outlet now is with N as both PE and N and L1 as L1)
What I want to say, if you are in Germany(or any other country where this would apply) don't trust outlet-switch combos to have a real ground. Most of the times they are PEN.
And there you see the scheme PEN - PE + N on same circuit, PE/N - PE + N on different circuits.
Another risk of bootleg ground is that if the neutral wire in the wall is broken, your "ground" becomes hot if anything is plugged into the outlet
I am always amazed by the craziness with health and safety stuff especially in the US and UK. Here we have whole residential buildings which are wired even without a ground wire in the walls at all. The worst I have experienced in 36 years of life from this is that sometimes bad appliances might "pinch" you just a tiny little bit when touching both their chassis and some kind of grounded thing, like a water pipe, the sink, or something like that.
If you want to have ground you must break the walls and install ground wires and connect to the only ground in the house, which is the bathroom outlet. I only do it to protect my computer and other sensitive electronics, otherwise I wouldn't even bother thinking about it.
Does removing the ground pin from a grounded plug cause any problems?
We have a window unit AC that has a GFCI on the plug, but my mom broke the ground pin off. The GFCI keeps tripping and we cant figure out why. (Its worth noting that it is plugged directly into the wall. Not a power strip.)
Our house was built in 1978. All of our circuits are either 3 wire or 4 wire. And it is run in metal conduit. So even if the ground wire were to break, the outlet would still be grounded thru the boxes. And yes, we have GFCI outlets which have the ground pin up.
This is such a great video!
Has this never been legal in the USA? In my country, this bootleg grounding used to be normal and legal. It's called "classical grounding". And it is definitely still better than not having any grounding at all. However, on new installations (since 1973), you are only allowed to do "modern grounding" (using 3 wires).
Q: Why do you think the electricity will go through your body inseted of going through the neutral? There is infinity less resistance if it goes through the neutral.
is the cost of running new wire also factor in a new panel and breakers or is that additional on top of the 8-10k?
deadly is a huge overstatement, at best its a tradeoff, I for one would prefer to have my old metal cased power tool connected to neutral than simply left unconnected. If its unconnected and the hot comes in contact with the case your body becomes hot and as soon as you touch something grounded like the refrigerator or dishwasher YOU get shocked. If you have a bootleg ground it would be a dead short and would trip the fuse/breaker. That is a safer situation than the first. It is highly unlikely that you are going to lose the neutral between the outlet and the service panel than you are in the terminal device or its flexible cable. That being said adding a GFCI is too easy and cheap to not do it that way
My 1996 rambler had something similar to this i. The basement, where someone had connected the neutral wire directly to the ground. It wasn't even in a box, just inside the wall. I only ever found out because i tore the sheetrock off the wall while remodeling my bathroom.
If you're going to install GFCI outlets make sure to locate the outlet closest to the breaker box and install it there. That way all downstream outlets on the same circuit will be protected as well.