No ground in wiring system - metal boxes.

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Larry - do to what I found - and did verify it with both a plug tester, and something I never leave home without - my Ideal "idiot light" (the neon light) - I would have to legitimately label it "No Equipment Ground".

Like the Ideal "idiot light" as you can test a hot by simply touching the end of the tester with a finger, and if it's hot you'll get a dim glow. This has saved me plenty of times when there is an open ground or neutral - or both.

Brett
 
al hildenbrand said:
Then, the 1962 NEC made the leap and all receptacles had to be grounding type. The passage (1962 NEC 250.114) governing bonding at metal boxes was rewritten to describe ground screw and/or ground clip connection of the EGC.

Prior to the 1962 NEC going into effect, NM cable had been available with an EGC but was rarely purchased by residential contractors. After 1962, the EGC became readily available in NM, but as a "reduced Gage" EGC. The 1962 NEC described how to hook up the EGC, essentially as it is today, and identified the reduced Gage EGC as a grounding means, but the actual installation of the EGC, as we think of it now, was not uniformly enforced.
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Interesting Al!
Its been interesting watching the evolution of the EGC over the years but now I have a time line to relate it all too. I occasionally run into the '60's houses with individual grounds, but not in the NM, only in the kitchen, Baths and laundry all connected to a Cold water pipe. What evolved as a grounding conductor has now become a GFCI and it appears the GFCI could next be in line, just as the three prong plugs became.
 
Sorry for going in another direction, but I was addressing his comment on why his "bug eye" was showing an open ground due to the fact that the reduced wire was not connected in all the devices.. I see these houses alot in the Tidewater area and I try to see if I can ground the device(s) first, but if I see that there are a lot of the devices are missing a ground wire, the I go to replacing the lead receptacle in the circuit with a GFCI type. In my opinion it offers them alot more protection than what they had originally. I was just offering a solution to a problem.
 
memyselfandI - keep in mind, that per NEC, you have to label every receptacle downstream with "No Equipment Ground". Your thought and action are obviously well intended, but the action needs to be complete.

Brett
 
bjp_ne_elec memyselfandI - keep in mind, that per NEC, you have to label every receptacle downstream with "No Equipment Ground". Your thought and action are obviously well intended, but the action needs to be complete.

bjp_ne_elec: I am sorry that you are under the assumption that I do not know what is required by the NEC. I should have extended my response to include the additional sticker information so that the person that posted the question could understand how to repair such a problem and for that I apologize. In the future I will try to include all information that is required and to answer any questions that are posted so that the person who posted those questions can fully understand the complexity of the NEC, and hopefully they can appreciate ANY information that a fellow electrician can pass on to them. Even if they forgot to tell them about the stickers. Sometimes our pride prevents us from asking for assistance when we are confronted with a problem that we are not capable of correcting. We all learn from our mistakes, we are also here to help each other out when we come across a situation that we are not familiar with. Thank you for pointing out my incomplete response.
 
MemyselfandI - I did not intend to imply you were not familiar with the code, and hope there is not hard feelings. I just wanted to point out that fact for anyone reading through the post, so there was no room for missing this detail. It's hard sometimes to include everything - but this was a very important point - and I just wanted to get it added to the great discussion that ensued in the thread.

Thanks,

BRett
 
I encounter this type of wiring from time to time --- usually those smaller grounding wires were twisted together, and wrapped around one of the cable clamp screws.

I have also seen instances of twisting 2 wires together halfway out of the box, and putting one tail on a grounding clip on the edge of the box, with the other tail attached to the duplex receptacle outlet.

On occasion, we will find that some idiot cut off the grounding wires completely without connecting them anywhere, and those make for interesting repairs trying to get the ground continuity restored ...
 
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