Pic1: Went to replace a wall-plate, found this. Every outlet up here, no, in the whole house is probably like this:



Pic2: Temporary Fix.



Pic3: Permanent Fix: (Yes, those are "GFCI Protected" and "No Equipment Ground" Stickers in both English and Spanish:



(PS: The bottom cord's the plug-strip for my desktop/server, the top orange cord is a truely temporary cord, so I can plug my laptop into the GFCI, thus keeping me from using the dreaded 'Cheater Plug.')

Let's see, I need about every 1-15 receptacle on the east coast, a couple of GFCIs, ahh forget that! Hand me the hammer!

For added kicks, here's a phone-junction in my closet. The cable (former incoming) on the left is only three wires, no fourth black wire:



The 3-wire cable used to continue down the wall and around the corner to another jack. For some reason, they fed my room first, then downstairs to the kitchen. This 3-wire stuff is nice and heavy, at about 18AWG Solid.

Ian A.
Theelectrikid

[This message has been edited by Webmaster (edited 02-28-2007).]

Ian, please pardon my density this morning. Other than the plaster gap being a little wide, what's the code violation? This looks to me like common circa-1950 practice.

Telephone cable hasn't always been "quad." Three-wire cable used to be the standard (the ringer signal was sometimes carried separately on the yellow wire).

John, first off, there's a date on the back of the wall to 1955, and a new sheet on top dating to 1990. (Of course for some reason the old sheet chipped away near the boxes, as can be seen in the picture.)

What I'm trying to point out here is the recept. was being held up only by the painted on-cracked-in-my hands wallplate.

Since they have no plaster ears (right word? Remember I'm the resident idiot.) they were help up by the plate, and would fall back when you plugged anything in. Almost every outlet in the house (kitchen and guest room excluded) is like this.

Plus, the darned outlet just needed replacing.

I know the phone cable wasn't always quad. (Thank you VDV Forum! )

Ian A.

[This message has been edited by Theelectrikid (edited 02-28-2007).]

Oh! Now I see what you're getting at. I've never liked plaster ears, anyway, since there's usually so little plaster to grab. In old work like this, I add spacers behind the receptacle ears so I can seat the screws and make the receptacle mounting solid.

Thank you for the clarification.


[This message has been edited by John Crighton (edited 02-28-2007).]

Don't worry about it, I should have been more clear when I sent them in.

I've seen old work like this where the original installer wrapped old wire around the yoke screws to create a spacer. But I've seen ground crimp sleeves, 8/32 nuts, etc.. used as well

more from Ian:

Ian. Wallpaper over a receptacle to hold it in place!? Well, I guess it's one elegant step up from paint or the bent nails as per your other pics!!
Retaining sockets/recepts in sheetrock is a problem here too, it being quite common for the whole shebang to come off the wall on the end of the cord cap/plug as a visual laxative. We found one here which had been plastered in absolutely solid with a great gob of "Polyfilla" [spackle?] by a French "Darwin Award" candidate.

Alan

Ouch... just while reading that post iTunes in shuffle mode decided to play "Just around the corner, half a mile to heaven"...

Never seen anyone paper over the plate... but the bathroom light switch was held in place by 4 layers of paper between device and plate, just with a small cutout for the rocker. Removing the wallpaper was promptly followed by the switch falling out.
Common problem with old work - the steel boxes were slightly bigger in diameter, so from about the 1960s onwards the claws on devices didn't spread far enough to secure the device. And for some reason most electricians were too lazy to use screws.
With the advent of the first PVC boxes screws became more or less useless because they didn't go into the box itself but a thin PVC ring that was just snapped into the box... pulling a bit harder on a Schuko plug reverses that process...
So, it's very important to have boxes solidly plastered in from all sides, so the clamps can't spread the PVC box.

I don't think anybody actually wallpapered OVER the plate. It looks like to me they carefully covered the wall plate with a scrap piece of wall paper, to make it blend into the background. They did a fairly nice job, taking care to line up the stripes. I had two switch plates in my house that were wallpapered the same way by the previous owner.

Actually, it was papered over, with the outlet cut out afterwards, I'd say. When I pulled the faceplate screw, it seperated from the wall and made the mess on the baseboard heater.

Ian A.

[This message has been edited by Theelectrikid (edited 03-02-2007).]

I have a 3-wire cord on a Western Electric 500 set which dates from 1962. Red is ring, green is tip, yellow is the ringer return. For a regular single-party line the yellow would have been strapped to green at the terminal block, but for 2-way party service with split ringing the yellow would have been run to a local ground.

I frequently see cover plates that have been decorated with wall paper. Only problem I ever saw was the guy that used Mylar" paper. It is the shiny / silver stuff they use for ballons.
It conducts electricity !!!
Lit up the entire wall in a fast food resturant where they hung a neon sign that didn't have a ground.
One note: A GFI receptacle without a ground will NOT provide surge protection for your computer. Even if you have a surge protector plugged into it. No ground, No protection.
Copper might be expensive but, $1,500 will buy a lot of wire. The ground can be run seperate from the rest of the circuit to any available part of the G.E.system.
Alan--

Alan, I know it won't provide surge protection. Wouldn't help much as it's only a $3.99 power strip.


Try telling that to my father or mother who are too busy doing yard work to worry about the leaky water pipe in my bathroom, or the breaker that kicks everytime I plug an extra computer in for five minutes... I keep telling them to call an electrician, but, hey, Cheaters are 79¢ each, having an electrician install a few new circuits costs $$.

You guys aren't the only ones to deal with this everyday.

Ian (Going to Cobalt Ridge to borrow a bulldozer!) A.

[This message has been edited by Theelectrikid (edited 03-11-2007).]

Wait till your dad's not at home, go to Home Depot or whatever and buy a replacement 2-pin outlet.

Yes, they're still made for replacement use in situations like that. At least it will keep the plug from falling out.

Wait till your dad's not at home, go to Home Depot or whatever

Home Cheapo? Who needs Home Cheapo when there's an Ace Hardware within riding distance of your home?

buy a replacement 2-pin outlet.

Heheh...



Ian A.

(edited to add image to ECN server)

GIT R DONE!!!!!!

I have to say I have NEVER seen a 2-wire device like that brand new!
Those things are just not found here in Canada, and of course people just use a standard U-ground as a replacement, WITHOUT:

1. Blocking the ground slot.
2. Protecting with a GFI.
3. Adding a separate ground.
4. Rewiring completely.

Come to think of it, option #1 is illegal now I THINK.. It used to be legal at one time, but personally if it is a " quick fix" for a rental property or where $$$ and the "wall damage factor" is an issue, option #2 is what gets done, If its not then I would choose option #4 and start from scratch..

A.D

Hahaha....well then Ace works. I just mentioned HD or (B)Lowes because I've always seen them there.

Oddly enough, they're more expensive than the cheeepie 50-cent grounded types, and about the same price as the heavy-duty grounded types.

The two-pin socket is still manufactured and sold here for replacement use ONLY, in cases like Ian's.

I'm pretty sure I also have a couple new ones at home I can send you also *shrug*.

Probably due to production volumes. I'm sure they make a lot more of the grounded type than the ungrounded type, so the cost goes down. Unfortunately, I'm sure that encourages DIYers to use the grounded type even in places where there is no ground.

Brian is absolutely correct. I worked for many years for a major electrical manufacturer. We had hoped to run the new version of these ungrounded residentials on one of the grounded automation lines by making a cover with the ground holes filled in (plus leaving out the ground contacts and the ground screw tab and screw). Very quickly we ran afoul of the NEMA configuration standard. You will notice that the parallel slots on the ungrounded are more toward the center of the duplex profile than the same slots of the grounded. As Brian suggested, the low volume for these ungroundeds as replacement-only made the tooling investments unjustifiable. I had the unhappy task of adjusting the factory costs of these ungroundeds upwards to reflect non-automated assembly.

Following Brian and R-H's logic, then this is pretty weird:

The regular two-pin SURFACE MOUNT sockets are cheaper than their three-pin cousins.

And those surface-mount gimmicks are already pretty expensive here in the USA (anywhere from four to seven dollars for the grounded type for the good-quality fully enclosed types).

Ditto grounded vs. standard cube-taps. Grounded's more expensive.

The surface mount sockets probably don't have a high enough volume on either type to affect production costs significantly (that's why they are so expensive), and the cube taps are likely high-volume parts for both grounded and ungrounded types.

Sven:

Brian is correct once again. If I understand what you mean by 2-pin surface mount sockets (Leviton's Lev-O-Lets, for one example), you're talking a completely different animal. I don't believe any manufacturer has the requirements for such devices that would justify automation. So, for those and for 3-pin surface mounts, you're talking more parts and labor for the grounded.

A corporate type once asked me, with some annoyance, why isolated grounding makes for more expensive devices in commercial duplex receptacles but less expensive devices in power receptacles. Similar answer: different construction. In the crowded and busy guts of a standard-size duplex, we have to work harder. One solution is an insulator that sits against the metal strap, separating the ground contacts from the strap, and terminating in either a ground lead or a lug with a ground screw. By contrast, in a power receptacle that is mostly plastic body against metal strap, to even achieve a ground we have to add a shunt to the ground contact and rivet the shunt to the metal strap. Want the ground isolated? Leave out the shunt and rivet, and the attendant labor and overhead.

Ever wonder how the US auto manufacturers did optional T-tops for some of their sportier cars?
They built standard cars and sent them to an outside shop to get the roof cut off. It was determined too disruptive to the assembly line process to treat the sheet metal parts of the cars differently.

*looks at Ian's picture*

Hey....let us know if your dad ever finds out that you replaced that socket while he wasn't looking?

Smart thing would be to re-use that grungy plate...but you didn't hear me say that.