i am somewhat experienced with electricity but am in no ways an electrician, but recently i have come across a problem that i have yet to find an answer to.
i live in a highrise apartment building, and have lived all over the building, it seems that every apartment i have lived in here i have had problems with various electrical appliances dying or literally burning up, the outlets all meter at approimately 126.7V, and it stays fairly stable, yet i have no real monitoring equipment to verify. i tested all the outlets in my apartment to find that approximately haf had an "open ground" with hot and neutral being fine. this would not bother me as much as 90% of the outlets are on light switches and half from the same switch is grounded properly, while half are not. i confronted the building attempting to get them to properly wire the inappropriately wired receptacles, and they promtly refused. my qeusstion really is not dealing with them as much as fixing the darn receptacles.
so the first question is: i am assuming open ground means that the outlet is not grounded to anything, thus never going back to the panel and/or out to a grounded piece of structure. is this assumption correct or not? i am interested in learning.
next is: i do not own a copy of the NEC, but is this considered legal under the NEC? i would think this would be a problem under the NEC because this is a high density highrise building.
and the last is: i understand that many older buildings are somewhat grandfathered in under newer revisions, but if there is a new revision of the NEC, how much must a building owner update to remain in compliance once they are aware of a conflic with regulation? or do building owners only have to worry about the NEC when wiring is installed?
any answers would be wonderful, thanks
i live in a highrise apartment building, and have lived all over the building, it seems that every apartment i have lived in here i have had problems with various electrical appliances dying or literally burning up, the outlets all meter at approimately 126.7V, and it stays fairly stable, yet i have no real monitoring equipment to verify. i tested all the outlets in my apartment to find that approximately haf had an "open ground" with hot and neutral being fine. this would not bother me as much as 90% of the outlets are on light switches and half from the same switch is grounded properly, while half are not. i confronted the building attempting to get them to properly wire the inappropriately wired receptacles, and they promtly refused. my qeusstion really is not dealing with them as much as fixing the darn receptacles.
so the first question is: i am assuming open ground means that the outlet is not grounded to anything, thus never going back to the panel and/or out to a grounded piece of structure. is this assumption correct or not? i am interested in learning.
next is: i do not own a copy of the NEC, but is this considered legal under the NEC? i would think this would be a problem under the NEC because this is a high density highrise building.
and the last is: i understand that many older buildings are somewhat grandfathered in under newer revisions, but if there is a new revision of the NEC, how much must a building owner update to remain in compliance once they are aware of a conflic with regulation? or do building owners only have to worry about the NEC when wiring is installed?
any answers would be wonderful, thanks
