Grounding Issue...

[JCNiest5]

A cry to all electricians out there...

I think I have a grounding issue in my house or at least in my room. It's with my PCs that the grounding issue surfaced when I first moved in to this house last year. I first noticed it when I plugged in a USB device into the front USB ports of a PC, I can actually hear static sound and see little spark and the PC would freeze. It doesn't happen if the USB device is already plugged-in before turning ON the PC. Not only a USB device can cause this problem. If I touch the grounding part of the front USB port with a metal object and it causes a spark, it also freezes the PC. I have a few PCs and it (at one time or another) happens to all of them now (if not consistently). I narrow the problem down to a grounding issue, maybe my outlets are not grounded properly since this is a house built back in 1921. I started a thread about this problem under Motherboard/AMD forum awhile back.

If anyone (especially electricians) can shed some light into what I should do to fix or diagnose this problem, I will really appreciate it. Thanks...

 

[Dangman]

Moved to the PSU Subforum since there are a lot more electrical saavy people here than in General Hardware.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Are you sure the actual wiring in the house dates back to 1921? If so, you probably have ungrounded knob & tube wires (open wires stuck to the wall w/non-conductive fixtures) and there may be nothing you can do.

Inspect the wiring going from the electrical panel (does it have breakers or fuses)? and see what it looks like. Also take a look in any place you may have exposed wiring, such as the attic or basement. You have to be a little careful because it is possible that the k/t wiring was only upgraded in part of the house.

You'll also have to open up one of your outlets (with the breaker off/fuse taken out, obviously) and see what is in there. If the wiring is more recent, it could simply be a matter of a ground wire that is poorly connected - sometimes that happens when wet paint gets in between the wire and the screw for the outlet.

 

[JCNiest5]

Are you sure the actual wiring in the house dates back to 1921? If so, you probably have ungrounded knob & tube wires (open wires stuck to the wall w/non-conductive fixtures) and there may be nothing you can do.

Inspect the wiring going from the electrical panel (does it have breakers or fuses)? and see what it looks like. Also take a look in any place you may have exposed wiring, such as the attic or basement. You have to be a little careful because it is possible that the k/t wiring was only upgraded in part of the house.

You'll also have to open up one of your outlets (with the breaker off/fuse taken out, obviously) and see what is in there. If the wiring is more recent, it could simply be a matter of a ground wire that is poorly connected - sometimes that happens when wet paint gets in between the wire and the screw for the outlet.

I'm not 100% sure if the electrical outlets were installed back in 1921. There is a breaker panel in the basement with all kinds of wires coming into it. There are also some big copper wires going to a separate bar, I assume they are the ground wires. I have not tried to open the outlet in my room and see if I can tell whether they are grounded properly or not. There are a few outlets that are only two holes, so I assume these aren't grounded at all. The outlets in my room all have three holes. On a brighter day, I will try to open up the outlets and see how the inside is wired. Hopefully that will tell me something about my problem.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Are the wires that come from the breaker panel bundled together in corrugated metal tubes (ie, BX cable), plastic tubes (romex), or not put inside a rigid tube (knob&tube)? If they are bundled together in tubes, are there two or three wires inside of them? Are the individual wires insulated with what looks like paper, cloth, rubber, or plastic?

 

[xFROSTx]

I'm not 100% sure if the electrical outlets were installed back in 1921. There is a breaker panel in the basement with all kinds of wires coming into it. There are also some big copper wires going to a separate bar, I assume they are the ground wires. I have not tried to open the outlet in my room and see if I can tell whether they are grounded properly or not. There are a few outlets that are only two holes, so I assume these aren't grounded at all. The outlets in my room all have three holes. On a brighter day, I will try to open up the outlets and see how the inside is wired. Hopefully that will tell me something about my problem.

Just to be a smartass, Google tells me that less than 10% of homes had electricity in the 20's, so I think it's safe to say that it's not quite that old.


Regardless, the wiring could still be 50 something years old, which is going to put you in a different situation than something that is only 10, 20 or even 30 years old. The first thing I would do, is try to narrow this down a little bit. While not an exact science, a quick and easy way I use is to check the breaker box. If your breaker box uses the old fuse style breakers vs. the newer switch style breakers, you are obviously on the older side of things. Next, take a look at the wiring coming into the breaker box. Older styles will probably be solid copper and have a tarishy (Yeah, I'm making a word up here), electrical tape like wrapping, while newer styles will look more like a "normal" insulated wire, only a bit thicker. Also, take a mental note of the wiring management/cleanliness. A rat's nest of wires is obviously going to be more of a PITA for the average Joe to work with (Unless you happen to have the right tools). All of this considered together should give you a rough idea of what you are working with age wise, if any repairs/upgrades have been made and the quality/safety of it all. If you are looking at an old, potentially unsafe, cluster-f**k, it might be a good idea to get a professional to look at it. If you still think this is manageable though, proceed to the nest step, fixing your problem.


I think you are correct, you have a grounding issue, a pretty serious one at that IMO. While I'm not a professional electrician, I've seen more than my fair share of grounding issues working on my own place. It was built in 1951, still has a lot of the original wiring still in use and not all of the outlets are grounded. I've seen all sorts of weird shit happen if I accidentally plug the wrong appliance/computer into a non-grounded outlet. Lights/TV's/Stereos buzzing and warning lights that I didn't even know existed on said device are what you commonly see, computers freezing up by static shock is a little more concerning to me. Pulling your electrical outlet(s) out of the wall to take a quick look at the wiring should give you your final answer fairly quickly. Either you are going to find a grounding wire that has come lose or is shorting out, or you will find no grounding wire. If you don't have any grounding wires and someone just installed grounded outlets (Not uncommon), you will probably need to re-wire the outlets to ground them properly. You might be able to do a hack job and just run a grounding wire to the bathroom or something (Bathrooms/Kitchens require at least 1 GFI outlet these days I believe, so there should be at least 1 grounded outlet in each of these rooms), but personally, I wouldn't trust something like that unless I had a professional involved. Lose grounding wire should be easy to spot and an easy fix.

If your problem isn't easy to visually identify, then you could try a tester of some sort from Home Depot/Lowes. I don't know if the inexpensive/simpler testers can do it, but I believe there are some out there that can not only identify the trouble with the line, but also give you a rough location as well. Might be a moot point though if it's just going to tell you want you already know - you need a professional.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Just to be a smartass, Google tells me that less than 10% of homes had electricity in the 20's, so I think it's safe to say that it's not quite that old.

Depends on where you are...here in NYC with historically utra-strict building codes, it's entirely possible for a house built in the 20s to have relatively modern BX-type cable w/grounded metal cladding. By the 50s, cladding-grounded BX w/copper wire had long since been required by code. The only real problems with anything build 1950+ is that they don't have enough outlets or enough capacity at the electrical box to run a few air conditioners at once.

OTOH, a house here costs too much :/

 

[JCNiest5]

Okay, I think I know what the problem is now. I turned off all the room outlets from the breaker box and I opened up the outlet boxes and there seems to be an uninsulated copper wire that was placed inside the plastic conduit that goes to the another box under the floor which I can see from the basement through a hole top of the wall. The two outlet boxes I've opened so far both have this copper wire clipped to the box, but it looks like they don't even touch any metal part as the conduit is plastic so without the copper wire actually grounded to the box, it didn't touch any metal. I tried to connect a short wire between the copper wire and the screw where the ground wire from the outlet is grounded to the box. Thus it makes the connection. I did one insertion of the USB device and I didn't experience any freeze or reboot, but haven't done any extensive testing (inserting USB device into the front USB ports) yet, so it remains to be seen whether or not that makes any difference. I know for a fact that there are only two wires (white and a bluish green) that go from the breaker box to these outlets. If it is grounded, it would be possible only by using the metal box under the floor and the rest of this metal conduit that goes all the way to the breaker box. Otherwise, no third wire, so no grounded at all. I am thinking I will crawl through the hole and go and see if the box under the floor has all the proper ground connections that the two copper wires go into. Maybe I will then see if I can make the ground wire more secured. Stay tuned for more update as I have time to work on it. Thanks for reading...