service panel ground

[huffmuds9320]

I noticed some of the outlets in my house do not have ground. My house is fairly old, built around 1920 so there are still some old wiring in the house. The electrical service panel is grounded since it has a copper wire that connects from the panel to underground.

There is no green or bare copper ground wire for some of the outlets. And the none of the light fixtures in the house have ground. The ones that are grounded connect to the metal junction boxes which are connected via conduit metal pipes to the service panel. I though a true ground would have to be connected to the ground bar in the panel.

Here is a picture of my electrical service panel. Notice it has the neutral bar but no ground bar.

 

[eljefino]

On the main box neutral = ground, that's okay and in fact should be firmly connected. Only on subpanels do you have to separate them. That's a newer and smaller looking box, the "backfeed" style main breaker being a clue. Wonder if it was designed as a subpanel and there's an option to ground or not ground that neutral bar. Looks like it's sitting on an insulator.

Only thing I'd worry about are those half width breakers on the weak 100A service.

Curiously it looks like you don't have Romex. Best option if you want a 3 hole outlet is GFCIs; they're sometimes legal to tie into ungrounded boxes. They'll detect current anomalies without the ground.

 

[Stu_Rock]

Yes, neutral and ground will be the same bus in the main service panel.

Without knowing what's on each circuit, I'm not too worried about the half-width breakers.

Grounding through the conduit should be OK as long as the conduit fittings are sound. Three-prong receptacles should be self-grounding type.

What does concern me is that there are 14 circuits and 9(?) neutrals. Therefore you have a shared neutral setup. Two circuits that share a neutral MUST be on the opposite phases. Often, in older homes, someone rearranges a panel without being mindful of this requirement.

 

[labman]

+1 on the shared neutrals.

Looks like everything is going out in conduit except 1 BX. If conduit runs to all metal boxes you should have ground. I would open up the ungrounded outlets and see if you have NM 2 with no ground wire. If so the GFCI outlets are the only alternative to pulling new wire.

If it is a recent purchase, you can bring in a licensed sparky to bring it up to code at the sellers expense. Talk to your local inspector.

Note, get it done right now, less you are the seller paying to have it redone later.

 

[huffmuds9320]

Thanks for the input everyone.

My parents purchased this house back around 1991 and got contractors to do some remodeling shortly after the purchase. I was kind of young back then (pre-BITOG) so I was not really interested in fixing stuff. The contractor recommended at the time to replace the electrical box with a newer one since the fuse box was very old.

The old wiring (probably some is still original) in the house is not even color coded, its just black color so I have to use a tester to see which one is hot. The remodeled parts of the house: kitchen, bathroom and a few rooms have color coded wiring which has ground wire for the outlets. Almost all of the metal boxes and conduit runs are in the garage. All the other rooms have plastic boxes. From my observation the outlets that do have the ground wire are connected to one of the metal junction boxes in the garage. Looking behind the ungrounded outlets, there is no ground wire for sure. But for some of the outlets I could replace the wiring easily as the access is not too difficult.

I have GFCI outlets in the kitchen and bathroom, I believe the code requires it in those locations. I think if you put in a GFCI outlet that is not grounded you have to put a sticker that says "No Equipment Ground" on it.

 

[labman]

You haven't said if any of the wiring is other than the metal conduit. If it is all conduit, you shouldn't need new wiring to have a good ground. If you have non metallic w/o ground or knob and tube out where you can get at it, I would replace it.

Too bad the contractor put in such a small box. Before I did much, I would set a sub panel giving you more slots and add some circuits. While you can add more circuits with half size breakers, the main box should give a limit for the number of circuits allowed.

I have a 1900 sqft house built in 1970. It has a 20 slot 100 amp box. I really need to upgrade to 200 amp, but the electric company won't do it unless I am adding major new loads. I did add an 8 slot sub panel a couple of years ago, but still have some circuits with too much on them.

 

[huffmuds9320]

Only the garage and parts of the basement are metal conduit. Everything upstairs have plastic boxes with nonmetallic wiring. The question I have is couldn't I just buy the ground wires (green nonmetallic) and connect from the metal conduit in the basement to the outlets upstairs to ground.

The label on the circuit breaker is kind of vague, it would just say like kitchen, room, basement, etc. So I switched off each breaker and see which outlets and lights the circuit is part of. I found that for one of the half size breakers, it covers several rooms upstairs. I never had any issues with overloading with what is setup right now.

Probably if you had electric stove, dryer, heating/cooling or water heaters which require 240volts, then they would upgrade you to 200amp service. For me I use gas stove, water heater and don't have a dryer so the 100amp service is sufficient in my case. The only thing in my service panel that is a 240volt is the central heater as you can see on the top right breaker of the box.

 

[tom slick]

Do you mean the upstairs is NM-B "Romex" like 14-3 or 12-3?

 

[Stu_Rock]

I think there needs to be a clarification here:
Nonmetallic cable = NM = Romex: usually has hot, neutral, and ground.

"knob and tube" = single wires, not in conduit or a cable, strung out inside the walls on knobs and little ceramic or fabric tubes.

Adding just the green ground wire is kind of like 3-wire knob-and-tube, which is unusual (but my house has some). If you are able to run the wire, why not just run "NM-2 with ground" instead. You'll have nice modern wire with THHN insulation. It'll be great.

Also, I should point out to the non-Californians that the 100 A service is fine. Look at how all of the lpcmidst128's wires are 12 or 14 AWG. No big loads.

Out here, basically everything that can run on gas does run on gas. It surprised me when I moved out here.

 

[huffmuds9320]

Sometimes I get confused with all that terminology.

Here is a picture of one of the outlets in my house with the old wiring.

 

[tom slick]

WOW that's old! Each of those is an individual wire? Those wires run through the walls with no conduit? Just clarifying.

Are all of your outlets (receptacles) GFCI?

 

[Julian]

Originally Posted By: lpcmidst128
Sometimes I get confused with all that terminology.
For sure. I've got a headache already.

Time for a trip out to the country.

 

[tom slick]

Another question:
Is another junction box somewhere else in the house? in a crawlspace maybe? Those cloth covered wires are not the same wire type that is in your breaker box. My guess is you have old wire in the walls then your electrician installed "home runs" to the new breaker box with new wire.

 

[labman]

Stu made a great post. I might add BX, flexible metal jacket also known as armor. It comes with or without wire and may have several different combinations of wires in it. Like conduit it can serve as ground.

It looks to me like the contractor replaced the old knob and tube where it was the easiest with conduit. At the end of the conduit, there should be a junction box where the old and new wire was spliced. All splices should be in a box that is accessible. Adding a ground wire outside an NM cable doesn't meet code. I would be surprised if adding one to K&N did. Again I agree with Stu, replace the old wiring with grounded NM. Fishing wire through unfinished spaces and uninsulated walls isn't too bad. You may even be able to use the old wire to pull in the new cable.

If you have a shared neutral, you can use 1x-3 with ground. That is 2 circuits with 2 hots and one neutral. If the 2 hots come off opposite legs, the neutral carries the difference in loads, OK. If both the same, the sum, fire hazard.

I don't know if you can make conduit or BX work with plastic boxes meant for NM. I did some work on my son's house that was wired up with BX. I just used metal boxes.

 

[huffmuds9320]

Right each of those are individual wires, you can see its not color coded in the picture mentioned. As far as I know its run inside the walls with no conduit. Not all of the outlets are GFCI, only the bathroom and kitchen have them.

No, there are not other junction boxes I know of. You are right about the old wiring being left alone behind the walls and it just connects to the new wires.

Here is a picture of one of the boxes where the new wiring meets the old.

 

[Julian]

Originally Posted By: tom slick
Is another junction box somewhere else in the house? in a crawlspace maybe?
Now TV cable I can handle. Signal looks better already!

 

[labman]

OK, depending on how many twists and turns between that box and your outlet, it may or may not be easy to pull in a length of NM with ground.

 

[eljefino]

I have family in Concord CA and they say you can't change a light switch yourself, you have to call an electrician. Any truth?

FWIW, all the pictures you've posted show neat work: the sign of a careful craftsman. May be worth leaving well enough alone.

 

[huffmuds9320]

I'm planning to just change the wires to the outlets that are easily accessible using Romex. And for the very hard to change wires I'll just put in a GFCI outlet. I don't want end up ripping through all my walls.

I honestly never heard of anything about requiring you to call an electrician to change a light switch but don't quote me on this. Maybe if you were doing major electric work then you have to have a qualified person do it so to make sure all the wiring meets code. Or if you rent, lease or live in apartments they probably don't want you messing with the electrical stuff without permission from the owner. Really if you were not allowed to do any electric work yourself then hardware stores would not stock them.

 

[tom slick]

If you own your property you can do electrical work on it. You cannot do electrical work without a license on anyone else's property.