People Are Adding Deadly Hacks to Outlets 

Exactly, it's not just because "the testers are cheap"

Was waiting for this to be mentioned during the "why" section of the video

@@somedudeRyan You can send down a small high frequency signal down the wires and look how fast (and/or strong) it comes back. That way, you get a rough estimate of how far away the grounding point is. A real Ground has at least a few meters from an outlet to the bonding point. In that sense "the testers are cheap" is correct - if you put in the brains, you can figure out that the connections is centimeters away, not meters as it most of the times should be.

@@sarowie in a video that purports to explain something technical "the testers are cheap" is not the answer to why it shows the wiring is correct. This original comment is the actual explanation. Technicalities are for losers, liars, and advertisers.

​@@somedudeRyan Except that it's not a technicality, it's because the cheap testers lack a function and capability that a more expensive device might have. That makes the cheap testers, cheap. Doesn't make them worthless or bad, just cheap.

Worst house I ever worked on was previously owned by a licensed electrician who told me he had re-wired the entire place just a few years earlier. I found wire nut connections hanging inside the walls, lights mounted without work boxes and even one connection that was just twisted wires buried in the plaster. Nice.

I like how guy never explained why a bootleg ground is a bad idea. When in fact its a great idea. I suspect dude never actually explained this because the arguments fall apart when u realize ground and neutral are tied together at the panel. Its better than nothing and thats why its there. If you find this, dont undo it or replace it with gfci or get a third conductor in there. Allot of NY apartments use the plumbing as neutral and ground

Stephen, I worked from 1983 to 2018 as a designer to Sr. Design Engineer for contractors. My son was buying a house recently and the inspector had concerns about a panel and a 40a breaker on #12 conductors. I got a picture of the panel sent to me and it was extremely weird looking. Breakers on every other slot only. The owner hired an electrician to change the 40a breaker to a 20. My son decided to let the panel go as is to let the sale proceed. (Former boss’s house). Here is what I found. Main panel black and red on 2 pole breaker, white and bare on n/g bar. At the sub panel, MLO, red in bus lug, white in bus lug, black on neutral bar, bare on ground bar. N not bonded. The breakers were all on the bus connected to white. After swapping the black and white at the sub, every receptacle was now wired backward. They were wired backward to show up correctly with tester. Every receptacle that was installed by that contractor at the time of finishing the basement was used when installed. Tabs broken off and screws removed. This was a first for me! I thought you might like to hear about that one. Respectfully, Kevin

​@@Wtfincwhy not install a GFCI? That should be safer than even a properly grounded outlet because it will stop current completely if it detects any ground fault. Grounding equipment chassis as a path for fault current is nice, but that won't stop fault current from also flowing through you to a suitable ground.

@@Wtfinc There's a reason why a separate ground is required and in some application there's also an isolated ground (isolating the ground on the outlet from the conduit or box ground). Yes, neutral is bonded to ground, but only at the main service panel/load centre. It gives a separate path from neutral back to the panel because the device that requires a ground typically has a metal chassis. Some appliances, consumer electronics and desktop computer systems have a metal case or chassis of some sort. You cannot rely on neutral for grounding in these cases because you cannot ground with neutral. If you have an incident with reversed polarity and the neutral wire is now live, the risk of electric shock causing injury or death (electrocution) is there. The ground is there for another path back to the panel that would then trip an overload protection (breaker or fuse) or a GFCI/RCD. I would suggest looking at videos by RimStarOrg, Matthias Wandel and Engineering Mindset for further explanation.

What *exactly* makes it dangerous? Don't the ground and neutral lines ultimately connect together up in the main box and in the 3-pronged device as well? It can't be an electric shock thing due the connections part mentioned already. Is it a fire hazard thing? Or, is it one of those things people *presume* to be an issue, but in practice isn't? Real questions here. I follow code(because seriously it's not that hard most of the time), but I'm genuinely curious, since no one thus far has given an answer that isn't at odds with what my electrical engineering degree tells me about how electricity works.

​@@InfernosReaper The ground and neutral should only make ONE and only ONE connection past the "service point" and before/at the first means of disconnect. If you have more than one, you will create a parallel path for neutral current for every circuit in that structure.

​@@G8tr1522 But *why* is that is an issue, though? It's a pretty simple question. I can *guess* at the answers, but I want someone to actually give something clear and definitive.

@@G8tr1522 no parallel path with a bootleg ground. Cause there is no actual ground going to the panel.

@@InfernosReaper you are right. There is no issue with this besides code. Most old appliances bond the chassis with the neutral anyways

Ya' gotta wonder what goes through someone's mind to make them think that having hot wires all over the place and shutting off neutrals is a good idea.

I was doing HVAC work on a 480v pump that stopped working. Tested it and it was getting 480v, but turns out the circuit breaker was on the neutral side. The breaker opened and that's why it stopped working, yet the pump was still hot. Gotta always be careful and treat every circuit like it's live.

Changing a light bulb is dangerous ……. Ohhhh please ………. I change light bulbs all the time With the light on …..

@@thomasschwarting5108 that's the issue... They're not thinking. A lot of people have no idea how or why outlets and switches are wired a certain way. They throw it in. Check it lights the bulb and call it a day. 🙈

@@mycaddigo youre such a badass, i could never do that

Consider yourself extremely lucky. In many places, what you did was extremely illegal (at least as illegal as the hack itself) regardless of how well you did. If an inspector finds out you did that, you could be facing tens of thousands in fines (at least) AND be required to pay a professional to redo it.

​@@TheOriginalJphyper even if everything was done correctly? "Land of the Free", right? 😂

@@LRM12o8 Yes, even if everything was done correctly.

Doing the wiring yourself, hiring an electrician to pull the permit, check it and having an inspector come inspect the work is perfectly legal. As long as you know the code and secure the wires and the connections are correct they won't have an issue with it. Just make sure to leave everything open till the inspector is done.

@TheOriginalJphyper in my city, you only need to pull electrical permits for new circuit breakers or pools, and homeowners can pull it themselves. Sounds to me like your local politicians need to be replaced. The dude had an electrician inspect his work. I really don’t see the problem.

Since I have a multimeter with two prong-leads, that just saved me 400 bucks (assuming I was too scared to shut off the power to my home so I could dissect a receptacle)

can't you just like switch off the power and then measure resistance? If there's bootleg ground, it's gonna be a short between neutral and ground.

@@beardsntools , Maybe, if you have a very good DMM. The resistance difference is small though. You might have 0.03 ohms vs 0.001 ohm. And the meter leads themselves might have a 0.1 ohm resistance. You can get benchtop DMM's that can do a "4-wire" resistance measurement that can accurately measure low resistances, but you need a special set of probes (or a pair of probes) and these meters are not something the average homeowner has.

@@jessstuart7495 I think you are underestimating the resistance from outlet to breaker box, 32' 14awg would be 0.14 ohm. The difference should be detectable with a normal multimeter. 0.03 ohm would be around 6' of 14awg.

@@ToxTox , 32 ft of 14ga wire is 0.081 ohms. (Copper at room temp).

The ground and neutral are connected at service entrance to your house anyway. If something smokes, that's something else. Realistically, that neutral wire will have less resistance than your body in a short anyway. Sharing that neutral wire as ground isn't ideal, but it does lead to the actual grounding. The circuit completes, so to speak. Don't get me wrong, I'd take the time pull another wire to a real grounding somewhere and do it properly on initial installation. But to rip open all your walls and spend north of $10k just so that your grounding is connected further away down in the basement to the neutral instead of closeby, is not worth it.

❤I like your idea . That would work if you have circuit breakers, some houses that old have fuses. Just my opinion.

I have the same issue. Thanks for the tip. I'll look into that.

@@jayjudd6518 always change the panel

If you install a GFCI breaker on an un-grounded circuit and then replace the receptacles on that circuit with 3 prong outlets, will a receptacle tester show that it’s correctly grounded?

@@JClishe no wire is still missing but it'll be safe.

Were yours dual function

@@5.43v Dual function ?

@@pudmina GFCI and AFCI are different technologies that do similar things. Dual function would suggest they do both (arc fault and ground fault)

Did you label all of the outlets? That's required by code.

yeah, but wouldn't that only be valid at the distribution panel ?

Holy crap

What about reverse polarity but not bootleg? Still grounded outlet.

​@@mannyramirez2307That would seem like a normal operating mode for the device, with an exception, that manufacturers can and often do add filters on the live wire connection (mostly appliances with a motor, like a washing machine, but also computers etc.) to filter voltage or current spikes both from and to the grid. If you have a polarized plug and you connect a socket the other way, you basically lose this filtration and bigger manufacturers have laboratories to tell if the fault and damage in your house happened because of this, so you can have your warranty voided just with this simple change.

This "bootleg earth" is a way to give you protection in a situation, when a live wire inside an appliance would become loose, or melt through it's sleeving (like in a metal cased toaster) and touched the case which could lead to a severe electric shock, that would just trip your overload fuse and disconnect this circuit. The absolutely most important thing in doing this is to make sure you've connected the neutral, and not live wire to your ground terminal. In Poland, when electricians find these earth to neutral connections in all soviet houses and buildings are not obligated to immediately shut down everything, but they ensure that the "zeroing" (that's how we call this "mod") is made, to give the users SOME safety and everyone is familiar with this. That's probably because, our country was pretty much completely blind to the western standards (as all of the soviet union) and after 1989 we were many years behind with these standards, so many, many electricians here do this to this day, but always warn the owner or client to prepare for an installation upgrade. We find some similar "issues" involving weird electrical tricks because of rapidly changing standards even on buildings from only twenty years ago. To summarize: it's better to connect earth and neutral together (like when you need to change a socket, but don't have the money and time to rip your walls just to add one new wire), than leave it floating and live happily for many years convinced to have quality sockets and just get a shock without a warning some day.

I'm sitting here in the middle of the night, writing comments about wiring sockets, but if you are all so interested in electrical safety, you should definitely think about your AMERICAN MOST DANGEROUS PLUG STANDARD IN THE WORLD, seriously. Just adopt UK's plugs or German Schuko, but get rid of these one hundred years old plugs that are nowhere near the word "safety". You can stick your US plugs like an eight of an inch into the socket, and the prongs get electrified, while your fingers can still slip onto them, or something metal (like a necklace) can fall on them and vaporize. There are so many better desings and this is definitely not worth keeping in the 21st century.

The same is true for modern "smart" switches for lights and fans that require a neutral. This is why new houses come with a black, red and white wire in a switch box even if an old dumb switch is installed. The unused neutral is just capped.

I'd tell you I'm not doing it, or charge you double because I'd be so frustrated trying to figure out what you did. You're not saving time unless the electrician isn't doing their job.

​@@leftyeh6495 - Then I'd recommend people to instead use an electrician who knows how to use a wire tracer.

@@leftyeh6495 I have electricians in my family. They don't mind if homeowners do some of the hard work as long as they do it logically, label things, and are there to explain where each wire goes. If neither of those things happen they do the same thing you do. Gut it and charge double.

Yeah this is not great advice. If anything, it’s backwards. Hooking up the plugs and lights is the easy part, knowing what wire goes where, which wire can go on which breakers, where certain wiring methods are allowed, and how the wire must be run-all of that is why you pay a residential electrician. Apprentices wire up the plugs. If someone calls me to hook up their receptacles and lights then they probably don’t have the knowledge needed to safely run wire. There’s code to follow, there’s “common” sense that comes with a few years in the trade, and Harry Homeowner understandably will know little of it, even if their Google-Fu is strong.

​@@abikuneebus Brass terminal = hot Silver terminal = neutral Green = ground Most outlet connections are THAT basic. Taking pics helps, as all you are doing is adding a ground wire....

A bootleg ground can easily become deadly because if the neutral goes open, current will try to take the path via the ground, meaning the appliance's case will have a 120V potential to ground if the neutral breaks.

This is a problem if the neutral went open at the panel, but that's rare. But if we bootlegged every ground in the house, suddenly every single wire is a risk if its neutral goes open. And open neutrals on receptacles is pretty common - and would electrify the grounded appliance. But only doing it at the panel minimizes the risk.

@@HarrisonFrith-cr4ie The same can be said for a properly grounded chassis if the ground wire breaks. How is that common at receptacles? You mean it's a common failure? (Since we know it won't work if the circuit is broken). Either way, failure of house wiring is something I didn't cover in my original comment, and a failure of the neutral wire coupled with a bootleg ground would be deadly. I'd say that's the biggest reason to avoid this, by far.

@@RAndrewNeal no it's different. Breaking the ground wire you just lose the ground meaning the case would electrify if there was a fault. But broken neutral with a bootleg ground WILL electrify the casing at 120v even without a ground fault. It is guaranteed to electrify the casing.

@@harrisonfrith7125 Ah yes, I missed that. If the power switch is wired properly, the chassis wouldn't go hot until the switch was closed; but yes, that would energize the chassis through the load. It's too easy to forget about wiring faults and assume an ideal condition for appliance failure when thinking about grounding. At least, for me.

Was commonly done in germany till the 1970s. Plenty surely still have it that way. And it works.

The nice part about "cheaters" is that at that point, the wiring is no longer at fault. It's the appliance. While some people may not be aware that a "cheater" doesn't create a ground, they'll soon learn after their appliance has a fault! What I mean to say is that you can't blame the wiring when you're using "cheaters." That's like blaming the highway when somebody passes on the shoulder.

Using a GFCI and marking the outlet as ungrounded is the correct way to handle it for sure.

But if you don't have grounded plug, chance are that you either have a fuse panel or a breaker panel too old to have GFCI breaker available.

@@Asakha1 Not even. I have an upgrade panel but no grounds because the house is old.

@@Asakha1 Then you install a GFCI outlet

i doubt one of those would enjoy a portable air conditioner which i use to keep cool during the summer months

@@dawn1berlitz it depends on the size of it, a small portable one probably won't trip it but I'm not sure I have never owned one of those but to my understanding they aren't really air conditioning they are an evaporative cooler (often called a swamp cooler). They work great and their amp draw is pretty low so it would probably be fine honestly but even with the commercial refrigerators they usually don't trip every time I have seen them run for hours without tripping the GFCI then all of a sudden you get a slightly harder start and it trips.

I heard GFCI isn't allowed on fridges because spoiled food is more deadly than electric shock risk in this situation

@@thewhitefalcon8539 it is not recommended but not against code, many refrigerator manufacturers will not cover warranty if you have it plugged into a GFCI and that is what is causing the problem. I have had quite a few warranty calls for continental who have "unit plugged into GFCI" on their list of non warranty issues, specifically that they will not cover GFCI trips due to normal operation.

​@@keldon_championWould those fridges work with European style panel GFCIs (called something helse like RCD or HFI) that trigger at 30mA imbalance rather than 5mA ?

I have a 50's home and I have had GFCI's installed...a few at a time as the money allows. I agree it's probably the best option for most people.

@@Anothertominohio: Thanks for your input on that (even if you did mean " '50s" and "GFCIs" rather than their possessive forms). Yeah, those outlets are pretty expensive, like over $25 per unit, and other outlets can be connected to them, but then to connect other outlets to them means messing around with walls anyway, so unless you're a DIY wall resurfacer then it would still be less expensive per original outlet to replace each one of those with a GFCI. Wouldn't it?

You just cut a channel in the plaster and then cover it back up. Doesn't take very long.

@@thelight3112 Are you willing to pay it for me?

Penny wise and pound foolish, installing conduits for the wires at construction time is a negligible extra cost which repays in this kind of cases.

Same goes with Russia. We still have those in I'd say most buildings and even standards. It's probably better than no grounding at all. Literal translation from Russian would be "Protective nulling" and it uses PEN-conductor (PE + N) differently for TN-C, TN-C-S or TN-S systems.

Same in Poland. Although, some genius in my old house hooked up ground wire to... water pipe. So yes, it was grounded but when you washed your hands when the washing machine was turned on, you had a tingling experience.

Common in Finnish kitchens and bathrooms built up to the late 90s, so a lot of them still exist. One downside is that an RCD (GFCI) is ineffective on such a circuit, and from what I gather is therefore not allowed.

Why on every circuit? In Europe it is mandatory to put one as the first thing in the fuse box. 1 of 300mA for the entire house, and a 2nd one of 30mA for all the "damp" rooms (kitchen, bathroom,...). What you are saying with the ground bridged to the neutral is not legal. At least not in my country.

@@blackov1466 A DIN mount leakage protector is nearing the $5 mark. So where the DIN standard is used it makes sense, 30mA general outlets, Bathrooms 10 mA.

@@blackov1466 Not legal usually does not mean you need to redo it for things that was built before the corresponding code was introduced. Otherwise you would be rebuilding houses every year

@@blackov1466 There is nothing mandatory "in Europe". Each country has its own rules which like everywhere have changed over time and generally the rules of the installation time apply. 300 mA or 100 mA RCDs are used on houses that use TT-grounding. In Finland TT is not used. in Finland grounding was mandated on wet rooms in 1930 and it was specifically mandated that if possible to use the neutral wire. In 1957 separate ground wire was allowed with words (or other method). Using the neutral for grounding was banned on new installations in 1989 but one still was allowed to use a 10 mm² (8 AWG) PEN-wire. I have no data but I assume that was rarely used as it required more copper than three normal wires. That was allowed until 2007. In 1997 universal grounding and wet room RCDs were mandated and in 2007 universal RCDs. FiInally in 2023 adding new ungrounded sockets on old installations was banned. As RCDs are typically put on the panel that makes using PEN-wires practically impossible. You cannot cut the PEN-wire with an RCD. I got a new panel in my apartment ten years ago but as I still have PEN-wires the RCDs were not connected. Of course they did not tell that to me. I thought for years they were in use. So doing this "bootleg ground" is still legal on old rooms. Tu just need to find sockets that have enough connections for it. Normal sockets have only two neutrals which are needed fro the incoming and outgoing wires. Note here you do not need to do it to use grounded equipment like a computer as anything can be used on an ungrounded socket so the only reason to change is that you actually want grounding. Here the compatibility issue was old ungrouned equipment on grounded socket and there is no regal workaround short of an isolation transformer. Fortunately such equipment are rare ad it is issue only for collectors. It was a serious issue in the 70s and everyone cut their plugs or used dodgy adapters. Reversing the connection is a problem and it has caused three fatalities since 1980 - all likely because of illegal DIY. There has been more non-fatal accidents. It seems bathroom, cabinets with a socket are the main problem. Because of this socket testers here must detect voltage on the ground. They have a metal contact you touch and it shows it there is over 50 V on the ground contact. Te most feared thing with grounding with neutral is that if the neutral breaks the voltage gets to the case. I could not find any report on accidents caused by spontaneous breaking of the neutral. There were some caused by illegal DIY. In other countries using neutral for grounding was allowed in Germany until 1973 (Klassische nullung). In Sweden it apparently has not been allowed. This is good in that you can install RCDs on the panel of of houses and apartments and instantly get more protection.

In Poland, "zeroing" was the proper and legal scheme until around 1994. Now this connection is called "TN-C" ("C"ommon conductor for neutral and protective earth) and requires at least 10mm² copper conductors. Of course this is impossible for outlets, so one has to use "TN-S" with "S"eparate ground conductor.

Yeah, and that's allowed installation for retrofitting. But they European grounded plug can be put in non-grounded outlet. So actually adding bootleg ground is an improvement. Only downside is that you don't have CFGI, but all outlets didn't have that until the latest revision of code.

@@phillipbanes5484 CEE 7/3. I know it's not called "european plug", but it's in use in large majority of european countries so I thought you could make the connection.

It was mandated that you use then neutral for grounding in the 1930 code. The idea was to save copper. In 1957 they allowed separate ground wire but still using neutral was the primary method. In 1989 the use of the neutral was banned but 10 mm² PEN wire was still allowed until 2007. Technically it would still be allowed in a room where there could not be IT-equipment but it would really take effort to find a case where one could use it. In conversion of old sockets or adding new it is still allowed as long as there are enough connectors. Also any new cable has to be with three wires and one has to make the connection at the beginning of the new wire.

That's really the only way this becomes hazardous as far as the outlet is concernde, which is why you can get away with it, well, basically forever, and not have any issues, but also could get away with it until you use it the first time. Important to not over-state risk, most of code is accounting for potential failure modes, and some of those failure modes are absurdly unlikely. To me, the real danger presented here is a faulty appliance, not a faulty wire in a wall, so the code accounts for some failure modes there, but, if you happen to have an appliance that's bad enough, well, you want some form of GFI to bail you out because even good wiring wont save you from something that loses it's internal neutral connection and also isn't grounded properly. Sounds outlandish, but, chinesium abounds and "CE" doesn't mean it's safe.

@@jttech44 The neutral failing inside the appliance wouldn't cause the casing to become live as there is no bond inside the appliance, so the current is not trying to get out via the case. It's if a neutral fails upstream of a ground neutral bond that you get this issue. If the neutral went open internally the appliance just wouldn't work. I've also seen quite a few outlets where a space heater has been used and has burned up the (slightly loose) neutral on the socket, causing it to go open. That would have caused the 120V case fault described here if it was bootlegged.

@@HarrisonFrith-cr4ie Space heaters really are a plague on the earth tbh

That simply is not true. I checked the electrical fatalities in Finland since 1980. There were no fatalities caused by breakup of the PEN-wire. There were six because of non-existent or broken grounding and three because of reverse bootleg ground. Note PEN-wires are normal in the time period most homes had them wheres using ungrounded sockets on dangerous locations was abnormal. Properly installed wires do not spontaneously break.

@@okaro6595 Read about it if you want to understand more. There's a reason we separate ground and neutral. The PEN to the house breaking is only a problem in TNCS and TN-C installations, but it will cause objectionable voltage to flow on the grounds.

This option is heavily frowed upon. It might even be against code.

It is a code violation

​@@TheRobWay1. Gosh. I have that problem in my house and I was about to ask about that since I read the first comment. Is 100% sure this is a code violation? That means the green wire needs to be inside the Romex wire in order to be up to code? Thank you.

The equipment ground must be run with the unbalanced conductors per code. In theory, it does work, but it doesn't offer a ground fault path for the unbalanced/hot conductors.

​@@NSilver832 NEC 250.134(2) this is the code reference... if there is an exception, I didn't see it at first glance.

I do not know what you mean with short circuit protection. Every circuit is protected against short circuits and it has nothing to do with protecting against electric shocks. It is more like protection against fire. In Japan many devices come with a separate ground wire that you should fix to the ground screw. Note that everywhere most deices are not grounded but double insulated like mobile chargers, televisions and their accessories etc. Grounding is used mainly on white goods: fridges, washing machines, microwave ovens etc. as well as on computers. The Japanese system sounds horrible to Europeans but the voltage is just 100 V which does reduce risks.

Here (Australia) we're the exact opposite. Every socket has an active ground pin, though some devices (double-insulated) don't use the provided ground. We are running 220-240v (depending on which state you're in), 50Hz, and the standard socket is 10A (there are provisions for 15A, 20A, 25A, 32A; all of which have restrictions on the earth pin that make it so you can't plug a device into a socket that isn't rated for it). While GFCI aren't required for older homes, new ones do require them to be fitted as standard. All work on Australian home electrical systems must be signed off by a certified electrician or the house is considered unsafe.

US GFCI detects around 0.004A of ground fault current. Typical Japanese circuit breaker is 30A (US houses do always have a similar circuit breaker in addition to GFCI as well). That is more that enough to kill a person at 110V if their skin is not dry, and give a nasty shock if it is. You still need to attach a wire between those ground screws and metal frames AND install a GFP into your mains breaker box if you don't want to die from a faulty appliance that easily.

Genuinely want to know why it’s dangerous to connect a neutral to the ground at the outlet? All the neutrals and grounds are connected inside the service panel. Why is it hazardous? Is it a function of resistance through one wire vs two?

@@stephenroberts4155 because you become the ground, versus your ground rod which is bonded to neutral at panel.

@@REALBanannaman that doesn't make any sense at all. no matter what, the resistive path would be identical to the ground rod. In assume a run 50ft from the panel: case A, normal. Resistive path from the ground pin goes down 50ft of ground wire, hits the ground rod; case b, bootleg ground, Resistive path goes from the ground pin, up 1 inch, down 50ft of neutral wire, hits the ground rod.

I would say its better than installing grounded outlets with no ground connected, but its still not good.

@@X4Alpha4X If there is no problem with the wiring, it should work. However, if a problem develops in the neutral, your ground will have the same problem with potentially very unpleasant consequences. And if the polarity is reversed, your "ground" will be powered.

And that is where installing conduits for the wires comes in handy.

@@apveening Landlords are too cheap for that. Lol

@@evictioncarpentry2628 Their problem, it will cost them extra in the end.

@@apveening Oh I know that haha. They never learn that lesson though.

I just moved out of a house like that. The noise through my guitar amp was unbelievable, so I started checking outlets. Almost every outlet was backwards with no ground wire. 1 outlet in my bedroom was backwards with ground so I fixed it and plugged the amplifier and pedals Into that and things got much quieter. I couldn't believe that every outlet was wrong. I'm pretty sure mine had ground because it was added later, as well as a couple of outlets in the kitchen. Other than those, nothing had ground. The house was renovated before I moved in so I'm sure that's when they got put in backwards because they all had 3 prong outlets and new covers, etc... I moved in Jan 2022 thankfully. The house I bought has modern wiring so my amp is dead quiet these days. The first time I tried it when I was moving in, I was very surprised at how quiet it was. 1st time I heard it that low.

Mine is in a similar situation, some outlets even have same color wires for hot/neutral lol

Yes, the NEC allowed this exception from the '50s until 1996. New construction and new outlets are to be 4 wire. The NEC has "Grandfathered" the 3 wire method, until such an outlet is rewired.

A 240vac circuit doesn't require a neutral so common practice is to use the neutral white line of a 6 or 8/3 line as ground. The newer machines do require a 120 circuit for low voltage displays etc etc however so hence the four wire installation requirement which basically just includes the central tap from the transformer and utilizing it along with a single leg of the 240 vac circuit to create a 120 circuit

@@fredmauck6934 check the local authorities for the code revision they are using, I know one county that adopts the IBC, NEC and plumbing codes shotly after they are published, another nearby county is still using the 1993 code

@@tylerdurden3537 Dryers almost all universally use 120 volt motors, with 240 volts being reserved for the heating elements. That way so dryer manufactures can use the same motor for a gas dryer or an all electric one. Plus it allows dryers to run on 208 without risking overheating the motor's as a lot of apartment blocks are supplied with 120/208 rather than 120/240, or very rarely some farm houses or the odd cases where a large property needs three phase power for one reason or another. Stoves accessories likewise run off 120, likely for the same reasons to maintain parts commonality with gas and compatibility with 208. Also apparently some older model stoves used to have 120 volt convenience outlets.

​@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 excellent points here, I never quite understood why couldn't dryer manufacturers simply install 240V motors so that you could plug the dryer into a NEMA 6-30R, for example and you wouldn't have worry about the old 3 wire vs new 4 wire configurations. As for ranges, manufacturers could have spent a few extra dollars for a 240/120 step down transformer to power the oven light and electronic controls so the stove could operate without a neutral and plug into a NEMA 6-50R

Can't*

Isn't that exactly what all those basic meters are doing? Ground is literally screwed onto the same place as Neutral in the main breaker box. If there is no continuity between your Ground and Neutral, Tere's a problem (99% of the time). I guess you could test for resistance but even that's a bit of a stretch.

And where do ground and neutral go outside of your house in North American wiring ?

@@dmitripogosian5084 Standard residential will have a 240v service. 120x2. There are three wires that will come from the pole to the house L1,L2,N going to the service panel. At the house there will be a solid ground rod in the ground to attach the ground wire to the service panel. At this point ground and neutral are bonded together. For the inside panel there will be 4 wires from the service panel. L1,L2,N,G. On the interior panel the neutral and ground are then separated to there own buss bars and not bonded together. Neutral will be insulated from the metal panel. The ground buss will attach to the metal panel. All ground wires will then be terminated at the ground buss and all neutrals wires will terminate on the neutral buss from each circuit. Hope that helps answer your question.

@@jonesgang Thanks a lot ! Last summer I was looking at my cable to the pole, consisting of insulated cable hanged on uninsulated stranded metal line, and noticed that the metal line has only one strand left intact. I always assumed it is just a mechanical support for the cable, but when electrical company came to repair it, technician said it is actually my ground (and now I am confused, maybe he said it is neutral ? ) . Anyway, after new segment was spliced into the damaged part, my lights stopped blinking when dryer was starting :)

@@dmitripogosian5084 All power wants to return to its source. That bare metal wire is the return/neutral/ground. If you only had a strand or two and the rest broke or chewed you were having some funky issues in your house. Lights would dim or they would get really bright or major brown out of power from time to time all sorts of fun stuff. Glad you got it fixed. If you have lost that wire all together you could have sent 240 through every 120 circuit. Crazy fun stuff!!

@@jonesgang Fun part I lived with it probably for over a year, thinking it is just mechanical. Given that this cabling is electrical provider responsibility, they came within half an hour of my call, looking worried :)

Yes, having a dedicated ground would cut the resistance to ground technically in half; However standard 12 gauge wire has 1.6 ohms per 1,000 ft at 77 degrees F. The shortest electrical path that can be lethal, invloving your hands, is hand to hand or hand to closest foot. Hanad to hand is roughly 2,330 ohms. Hand to closest foot is roughly 1,300 ohms. (2,330^(-1)+1.6^(-1))^(-1)=1.599 total resistance. Max peak voltage of 120vac is roughly 170v. 170v/1.599ohms=106.323A total current flow. Current through the 1.6ohm nuetral/ground would be 170/1.6=106.25A leaving .0731A or 73.1mA. Anything over 30mA can cause the heart to stop. Oddly, cutting the resistance to ground in half by having a dedicated groud would result in total current being 212.573A with 212.5A running through the two grounds, leaving .073A flowing through the person in parallel. Still enough to stop the heart. So there is virtually no difference between having just a nuetral ground and also having a dedicated ground.

Actually the $400 tester can detect false grounds by measuring the impedance between neutral and ground. Below a certain threshold e.g. jumper between the neutral and ground screws on the outlet the tester will flash an F over the ground to indicate false ground. In a properly wired home with modern wiring the ground and neutral only connect at the main panel, nowhere else, giving a higher impedance between neutral and ground at outlets.

be almost impossible to prove the previous owner did it. Most people own a home 5 to 10 years max and we're talking 1970"s back. MIGHT get the inspector if you paid for an inspection.

@@williambrennan5701 In addition, the central question for torts is "what loss is being claimed?" Just doing something that might have terrible results is not a tort; all that could be claimed is the cost of removing the bootleg grounds. The lawyer would be a lot more expensive than that.

Name a single 20 amp appliance you have in your house without lying. And your dad's old circular saw from the 1960s that will never be outside of the garage (and probably never actually be used) doesn't count.

@@joshuaewalker There are plenty in the world. Especially commercial floor polishers, and high power microwaves. I have the latter. But even if there is only one in the country, the code is the code!! An "instructional" video should never show violation of the code. Outlets are designed to restrict the size of plug to put in, based on the capacity of the wire in the wall. You cannot plug an electric stove into a dryer outlet, for a good reason.

Plug a 20 amp appliance into a 15 amp circuit and all that will happen is the breaker trips. This is a non issue, though it would be obnoxious

@@rtel123 High power microwaves that plug into 20 amp outlets are generally (99.99999% of the time) an installed appliance (built into the wall or above a stove/range), not a countertop appliance. You're not going to be taking your 1600w microwave out of the wall and carrying it to another room and plugging it into a 15 amp circuit that has an incorrectly installed 20 amp outlet.

@@joshuaewalker Irrelevant. Code is code! An advisory video should not show a code violation as advice!

The code doesn’t stop you from connecting 14awg to a 20amp device. It does require, in this instance, a beaker no larger than 15amp

And nowhere else. Ground is exclusively for safety - in the event that there is a short in an appliance or fixture that causes its chassis to become energized. If you bond neutral to ground at the receptacle, ground becomes meaningless.

​@@wallyballou7417 That doesn't make sense. Since the return and the ground are going to the same place, if the ground is connected to the return on the back of the receptacle and a short energizes the chassis, it will be a short back to the panel and the breaker blows (standard breaker is only on the hot so the breaker doesn't care where the return current goes). Plus Kirchhoff's voltage law stipulates that two equal lengths of wire, one to a voltage source and the other to a voltage reference point (for example, ground) connected together will have half the source voltage at the connection point. (Here each wire acts as a resistor (very low resistance, but a resistor none the less) so the connection point is in the middle of a voltage divider. So in the brief time before the breaker blows, here in the US the chassis should have a voltage of about 60Vac, not 120Vac no matter if the return current is on the white wire or the ground wire.

@@Sembazuru Don't take my word for it, check the NEC. It's very specific about this.

Electrically Chris is correct, Code wise Wally is correct. Current should never be flowing on an Equipment Grounding Conductor except to clear a ground fault. In an ideal scenario electrically it doesn’t matter the return path as long as it trips the circuit protection. Thermally we don’t increase EGC for high temperature situations, and once we go above 20A over current protection we start reducing the relative size of our EGC. So if you have a 50A circuit with #8 wire you only are required to have a #10 EGC per Table 250.122. If we’ve bonded neutral and EGC at our receptacle… then we now have a #10 in parallel with a #8 and are majorly exceeding the current capacity of that #10 that is only rated for 35A. We then have a situation where we can overheat that #10 without ever tripping the overcurrent device.

@@Sembazuru it does if you factor in modern circuit protection a GFCI device has the active and neutral run through a coil if there is the same power on the active as the neutral they cancel each other out but if one is higher than the other a voltage is generated and trips the device. Now if you bond the ground (no ground wire) and neutral at the outlet in a fault all power that goes to ground ends up returning on neutral defeating the GFCI. This is why the system was done this way the 10 to 30ma will hurt but most people will survive it but 16a or 20a that a fuse or breaker needs to trip is generally a death sentence also those device can allow upto 10x their rated capacity in a short situation so a 20a breaker could see you get 200a

Right? It's a bit scary what people will do sometimes.

It's not necessarily shady, it's usually ignorance. Uninformed people think the neutral can be used as a ground.

People do it to be able to use modern things they buy in older buildings. My daughter apartment in 70 building has all kitchen outlets on the same 15 amp line. What can you do, you have to live with that

Yeah, where you live, you use 220 volt, which will kill you.

No under load a neutral still measures as 0v

@@shaynegadsden It will not be 0V under load but it will be very low. 12AWG wiring has ~0.007 ohms/ft so on a longish run of say 70ft you could get as much as 0.5 ohms, which at 10amps gives you 5 volts. That's worst case, typically see a volt or less so it takes sophisticated tester to detect it.

@@jiml5837 it is zero a $700 fluke is classified as a sophisticated tester, i know what you're saying but the method here will never see that. The only way to see that voltage is to probe both ends of the neutral while it's loaded, every test you could perform at that single point will show as 0v.

@@shaynegadsden No. Depending on the resistance on the neutral conductor, voltage between and ground can be present. I've measured upwards of 3V on occasion. And thats on circuuts with no major problems like a poor neutral connection. Electric current flows on ALL available paths. Not just the path of least resistance.

@@benjurqunov in any of this have you seen mention of an earth, No because the lack of an earth is the reason for this problem

We had a record player that had capacitors from each leg connected to the chassis. Not nearly as dangerous, but regardless of which way the plug was connected touching the record player and any grounded thing produced a bite.

I was installing stereo equipment back then, and I could feel the difference by lightly touching the case (which were metal back then). If I felt a bit of tingling, I would reverse the plug and the tingling would be gone. I always instinctively knew that was right, without actually learning about it from anywhere.

There are enough countries with unpolarized grounded sockets and microprocessors and home computers handle that just fine.

Those radios are really dangerous. In Europe they cannot be used on grounded sockets as you would not want anything grounded next to it. Polarized plugs have nothing to do with microprocessors. They are used on lamps etc. to ensure that the switch breaks the phase and not the neutral.

You’re correct and that’s called bonding and is there for our safety to create a ground fault current path. The bootleg ground directs that path to the appliance or to us instead.

You can only have 1 bonded neutral in a circuit which is at the panel so doing this hack creates 2 which from what I understand if there is a fault, instead of it going back to the panel and tripping the breaker part of the current can go to the hacked bond on the plug and not trip the breaker which is where the problem arises.

@@LRN2DIY Thank you for explaining this. I didn’t know. I have learned from LRB2DIY and likely been saved from injury. A happy subscriber.

@@Mixwell1983 Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me and in a professional way. Thanks for looking out for your fellow man. Blessings to you.

What? Ungrounded outlets are almost non-existent in most of Europe. I live in Czech Republic and only ungrounded sockets I've ever seen were 2-pole flat ones (type C) and ones wired to isolation transformers at work (factory). Even those 3-pole wired with 2 wires (old TN-C installations) are grounded via PEN conductor, btw in those cases the PEN wire goes to the PE/ground terminal first and then to N terminal (inverse to what was shown in the video).

Maybe in some of the most primitive backward European countries, not so where I live.

@Phillip Banes basically all of scandinavia, germany and more. Especially older houses, tho never houses now tend to have 3 pin outlets with earth connection now. We have earth in bathrooms, kitchen etc. but most other places theres no earth in older buildings.

@@WolfGamerBohumin Czechoslovakia was the first country to mandate universal grounding in the 1930s. In most countries only wet room outlets were grounded. Universal grounding was adopted in many countries only in the 1990s.

Neutrals and grounds go to the same place in a main panel.

They're bonded in the panel but separated in the wiring for good reason. It's complicated, but everywhere ground and neutral is bonded means that if the neutral on that conductor breaks the ground will become live. Doing it at only one place minimizes the risk.

It is an option, but it’s expensive. Around $75 a breaker. It’s cheaper to find the first receptacle coming off the breaker out of the panel and replace it with a GFCI plug. The power coming from the panel goes to the line side of the GFCI and the power leaving the box to go to other receptacles gets connected to the load side of the GFCI. With it wired this way, all outlets on the load side will be protected by the one GFCI receptacle. You can then install regular receptacles on the other plugs since they are protected by the GFCI. It’s more labor, but it’s way cheaper than buying 15 GFCI breakers

Mexico is not a great example of safety.

@@leftyeh6495 What makes that unsafe?