Old house, old electrical outlets

Improvolone

I'm renting, and my new place has many outlets without a ground. Some outlets do have the third/ground hole, but when I plugged in my surge protector it's "not grounded!" light came on. I haven't checked every outlet, but I have found one outlet (I think its a GFI) that seems fine.
Is there any danger with these old outlets for me or my electronics?

Mushiwulf

Any danger to you can be mitigated by replacing the outlet with a GFCI. However, that will not make it any safer for your electronics. Also, most surge suppressor warranties require the device be plugged into a grounded outlet.

Depending on the situation, fixing the problem can be easy or difficult. If the wiring gets from place to place in some kind of metal conduit and the boxes are metal, it is possible that the boxes themselves are grounded. If this is the case, it can be as simple as adding a ground pigtail to the box and connecting a grounded outlet.

If this is not the case, it requires running a ground wire to the outlet. If it comes down to this, you can always chose a few selected outlets to have grounded, to save money. Your landlord may be helpful here, but I don't know that he has any responsibility to make these changes, so you may have to foot the entire bill if you want it done.

Buttcleft

Just for reference, My place has no grounded outlets, and my surge protectors have done a decent job at sacrificing themselves to protect my more sensitive shit.

acidlacedpenguin

A friend of mine fixes this problem by cutting the ground prong off of all of his electronics with a hacksaw.

DO NOT do what my friend does. I plugged something in once at his place and the whole house lost power, not to mention running this risk of death by electrocution while performing daily menial tasks. . .

matt has a problem

The surge protector will work fine, as it doesn't rely on the ground, it relies on a fuse or breaker inside of it to blow or trip. It's basically a self-contained GFI outlet. You can buy 3 prong to 2 prong adapters too.

Buttcleft

matthasaproblem wrote: »

The surge protector will work fine, as it doesn't rely on the ground, it relies on a fuse or breaker inside of it to blow or trip. It's basically a self-contained GFI outlet. You can buy 3 prong to 2 prong adapters too.

Or just replace the outlets with 3pronged ones.

Won't have the ground functional, but atleast you won't have to dick around with those annoying adapters. Obviously either check with the landlord first, or keep the old ones and throw them back in the wall when you move.

Dog

He's renting. Any socket replacement would have to go through the landlord before he did anything (and the landlord would probably want to do it himself). In the meantime, hardware stores sell 3->2 pronged converters and they are super handy.

Midshipman

Grounds protect you from being electrocuted by short circuits. They don't really have anything to do with protecting electronics from themselves.