Electrical_Hazard
New User
- Location
- Mexico
- Occupation
- Retired
I am not a qualified and certified electrician. However I have wired places including this place and it works.
Living in another country rather than my country of origin which was USA. and experiencing a different way of doing things where rather than ground with a copper rod in the ground near the circuit box instead everything is grounded through the building's neutral. So there are only 2 wires coming from the external circuit breaker into the apartment. So the blue wires were connected to metal posts sticking out into the space from the outlets AS standard construction here in this country is to have these ground posts on the outlets rather than holes like in America.
When I wired the boxes in here I found that the blue lines were connected both to the return ports for the cords in the outlets and also what I considered to be the 'ground' posts. This seemed unsafe to me because there was one of the 2 lines from the wire connected where it could be touched by anyone simply touching that outward facing ground post.
In the USA we don't have a ground post sticking out of our outlet that you can touch but only a jack/port/hole where the power cords ground post will go into. So when I replaced all the old outlets I used 2 hole outlets (no ground) and didn't include the ground according to the local convention I was seeing. Basically took the bonding neutral posts off everywhere in my place so nothing grounds, similar to the old 1930s style I found in my grandparents' house in America before we updated there, since there was no official 3rd ground line available. Of course you may think this is unsafe because what if one of the items should somehow have a worn cable sleeving and then become hot right?
Everything worked fine with a few irritating surges that turned on touch switched lights which may have come from a compressor on a fridge. I figure this has nothing to do with my wiring and only to do with a fridge compressor coming on and causing a surge that overpowers the touch switches. There was one strange incident in the building when the power of only our area of the building (10 apartments) once went out last year. Only happened once. No explanation but when I looked around the power was on elsewhere. Lasted a short while but someone must have fixed it. At the time it happened no one was actively doing anything in my apartment.
When I wired the place I traced back all wires to their source wire thru the plaster or soft block walls here, and replaced most of the cables but not quite all. I even pulled the cables out of the temporary cement floor spaces where they were and replaced with new cables. All the hot are hot and all the neutral are neutral but I need to test. Everything worked here for a year and a half with just those weird couple things I mentioned to say otherwise the touch lights and then the one time the power went out around this stairwell, which was totally abnormal. I don't want to be the weakest link here
So I want to test each outlet to make sure the main is the main and return is return. at every one of the umpteen outlets in the place here. Before the electrician from the company comes to do some replacements to add ground posts which are recommended by the local company. So what to do to test this? Simple amp meter how can I test this?
Living in another country rather than my country of origin which was USA. and experiencing a different way of doing things where rather than ground with a copper rod in the ground near the circuit box instead everything is grounded through the building's neutral. So there are only 2 wires coming from the external circuit breaker into the apartment. So the blue wires were connected to metal posts sticking out into the space from the outlets AS standard construction here in this country is to have these ground posts on the outlets rather than holes like in America.
When I wired the boxes in here I found that the blue lines were connected both to the return ports for the cords in the outlets and also what I considered to be the 'ground' posts. This seemed unsafe to me because there was one of the 2 lines from the wire connected where it could be touched by anyone simply touching that outward facing ground post.
In the USA we don't have a ground post sticking out of our outlet that you can touch but only a jack/port/hole where the power cords ground post will go into. So when I replaced all the old outlets I used 2 hole outlets (no ground) and didn't include the ground according to the local convention I was seeing. Basically took the bonding neutral posts off everywhere in my place so nothing grounds, similar to the old 1930s style I found in my grandparents' house in America before we updated there, since there was no official 3rd ground line available. Of course you may think this is unsafe because what if one of the items should somehow have a worn cable sleeving and then become hot right?
Everything worked fine with a few irritating surges that turned on touch switched lights which may have come from a compressor on a fridge. I figure this has nothing to do with my wiring and only to do with a fridge compressor coming on and causing a surge that overpowers the touch switches. There was one strange incident in the building when the power of only our area of the building (10 apartments) once went out last year. Only happened once. No explanation but when I looked around the power was on elsewhere. Lasted a short while but someone must have fixed it. At the time it happened no one was actively doing anything in my apartment.
When I wired the place I traced back all wires to their source wire thru the plaster or soft block walls here, and replaced most of the cables but not quite all. I even pulled the cables out of the temporary cement floor spaces where they were and replaced with new cables. All the hot are hot and all the neutral are neutral but I need to test. Everything worked here for a year and a half with just those weird couple things I mentioned to say otherwise the touch lights and then the one time the power went out around this stairwell, which was totally abnormal. I don't want to be the weakest link here
So I want to test each outlet to make sure the main is the main and return is return. at every one of the umpteen outlets in the place here. Before the electrician from the company comes to do some replacements to add ground posts which are recommended by the local company. So what to do to test this? Simple amp meter how can I test this?
