Ungrounded outlets in my room. Hazardous to my health?

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Funcoot

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2007
Messages
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This isn't a question about my laptop, but more of a question about my own personal health!

My laptop is metal, when I type on it plugged in, I notice the ground light on my surge protector flicker on. When I stop touching my keyboard, it goes off.

I'm acting as a ground...

Now I've just realized this, but I've been doing this for months! How hazardous is this for my health?

My big fear is that I've put wear and tear on my heart! :x

But then I think, there was a time before our outlets were grounded right? We didn't always have those 3 prongs. People used to use electronics way before we had those 3 prongs.

Can anyone put my mind at ease, or warn me of what these potential dangers are?
 
Your surge protector should have 3 prongs going into the wall, or did you cut the ground/use an adapter, if an adapter is the metal tab screwed into the outlet cover plate?
Do you have the same problem while plugged into another room?
 
Only a doctor or a specialist can really answer your question. From what I learn, the only thing that's really damaging to a body is if lots of current goes through it. Since you don't feel anything, there's barely any, if any, current going through your body. So it's unlikely there's serious health concerns.
 
n3zyd said:
Your surge protector should have 3 prongs going into the wall, or did you cut the ground/use an adapter, if an adapter is the metal tab screwed into the outlet cover plate?
Do you have the same problem while plugged into another room?
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The surge protector is plugged into an adapter that uses 2 prongs.
 
Funcoot said:
The surge protector is plugged into an adapter that uses 2 prongs.
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That's the problem. Those adapters are designed for you to run a wire from a little metal tab on the adapter to something that is grounded. You are not supposed to just plug in the adapter and leave it at that.
 
That would explain a lot. How would I do that?

What would I use and where would I run it to? Nothing in this room is grounded to my knowledge and the only grounded outlet in the house is in the living room.

This house is old.
 
I paid an electrician to ground all 12 outlets in my office for $150. it was well worth it, especially with the warranty and insurance on my UPS dependant on it.
 
Well, I suppose there's a tool that can allow you to find things that are grounded. And then what you would have to do is run a wire from that tab to the ground. However, there's the chance that even though it's grounded, it might not be properly grounded, hence being useless.
 
Funcoot said:
The surge protector is plugged into an adapter that uses 2 prongs.
Click to expand...

That's some bad mojo right there. Do you have cable internet or TV in that room? You might be able to jury rig a ground using the coax ground. Don't know... I'm not an electrician.
 
Ruoh said:
That's some bad mojo right there. Do you have cable internet or TV in that room? You might be able to jury rig a ground using the coax ground. Don't know... I'm not an electrician.
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I am an electrician, do NOT do this. At best you could cause interference to your cable/internet. At worst you could fry everything connected to it if something did happen to short out.

As far as any health concerns about you current situation, unless you have a heart condition or pace maker there should be absolutely nothing to worry about. The ground sensing circuit is likely of the intrinsically safe type and is only showing that there is some connection to something. Since there is no ground reference (since it isn't connected) it doesn't have any way to determine if it is properly grounded or not. If you are concerned about your equipment (and you should be, I've blown up a power supply recently so its not like these things don't give up eventually) you should really hire someone to look at this for you.
 
Funcoot said:
This isn't a question about my laptop, but more of a question about my own personal health!

My laptop is metal, when I type on it plugged in, I notice the ground light on my surge protector flicker on. When I stop touching my keyboard, it goes off.

I'm acting as a ground...
Click to expand...

I dont know how on earth (heh... pun... get it) you're surge protector is detecting any form of "ground" from you

1) human body is MASSIVIELY RESISTISTANT to electrical current (even more so with DC current). Plus, laptops convert the AC high voltage to DC low voltage at the brick (ac adapter), usually with no ground after that. How on earth (heh.. pun) your surge protector is detecting any form of ground is beyond me.

2) You're laptop does not get any high voltage source of AC electricity, its 19 volts DC. So it's not really dangerous, and in fact, most laptops don't have a separate ground going to them to begin with.

edit: this is just me wondering about your surge protector and laptop specifically, but you should definitely check if your outlets are grounded. Non-grounded high voltage stuff is a no-no.
 
If the basement is unfinished or uses drop ceiling, I would pull out all the ungrounded outlets, try to fish a 14 or 12 gauge wire from the basement and ground all the outlet boxes (which will in turn ground the outlets). Idealy try to use a single wire per circuit, otherwise you'd need to upsize the ground. Replace the outlets with 3 prong ones, test to ensure the ground works. Oh and the wire you ran would go to the electrical panel's ground. Though the proper way of doing it would be to pull all wire and replace with 14/2 with ground, but a quick fix would be to just add an extra single wire as ground. I'm not sure what code says about this though.

If you can't ground the boxes, replace the outlets with GFCI.

As for health, I doubt it could do anything, but the fact that it's happening means a dangerous situation could potentially occur. You never want to be the ground to anything.
 
Risant said:
I am an electrician, do NOT do this. At best you could cause interference to your cable/internet. At worst you could fry everything connected to it if something did happen to short out.
Click to expand...

So, he'd basically be right back in the same boat he is now. I've had friends with old (80yo+) houses and it's always a nightmare.
 
serpretetsky said:
I dont know how on earth (heh... pun... get it) you're surge protector is detecting any form of "ground" from you

1) human body is MASSIVIELY RESISTISTANT to electrical current (even more so with DC current). Plus, laptops convert the AC high voltage to DC low voltage at the brick (ac adapter), usually with no ground after that. How on earth (heh.. pun) your surge protector is detecting any form of ground is beyond me.

2) You're laptop does not get any high voltage source of AC electricity, its 19 volts DC. So it's not really dangerous, and in fact, most laptops don't have a separate ground going to them to begin with.

edit: this is just me wondering about your surge protector and laptop specifically, but you should definitely check if your outlets are grounded. Non-grounded high voltage stuff is a no-no.
Click to expand...
When laptop is connected to charger, it is grounded via negative wire on the laptop side and neutral wire on the charger side, if the charger has 3-way plug the grounding is redirected from N to P wire inside the charger, same as TVs which also come with only 2 wire plug. That's why his surge protection displays the ground on when he touches the laptop, basically it displays that something(his body) is connected to the ground, not that he grounded the computer. His body is due to that exposed to a small voltage(around 1V, that is halt by his body).

The only dangerous thing about it is, that if he would be holding his metal laptop in hand while got hit by some other power source, than he could get electrocuted because laptop would be his negative pole.

Desktop computers as opposed to laptops, phones and tablets have to be connected only to 3-wire sockets with ground active, otherwise they would pose a great health and life hazard because HV would appear on its case and monitor would create a strong electromagnetic field based on it's horizontal frequency(around 100 kHz)which would result in fatigue, drowsiness and after longer time maybe even some illness to people and animals living around it.

So I assume for whatever reason your house is ungrounded, call power company to ground it.
 
Kusanhagi said:
I paid an electrician to ground all 12 outlets in my office for $150. it was well worth it, especially with the warranty and insurance on my UPS dependant on it.
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There's no way he ran new wire to all 12 outlets for $150. It's almost certain he merely jumpered the neutral to ground at each outlet, which will fool the UPS, but it presents a major shock hazard to people. It's a big no-no. What did he actually do?
 
dhar2285 said:
There's no way he ran new wire to all 12 outlets for $150. It's almost certain he merely jumpered the neutral to ground at each outlet, which will fool the UPS, but it presents a major shock hazard to people. It's a big no-no. What did he actually do?
Click to expand...

Perhaps it wasn't grounded at the box, which would be a very easy fix. If not good luck to him.
 
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