Which Way Is the Ground?

The electrical system in the house is... quaint.

Electrical service was pretty unusual in 1894, the year this house was built. We can tell it used to have fuses; I've found some old used ones in the dirt under the house. Now it has not one, but two, panels of modern circuit breakers.

Even so, there's still lots of old knob-and-tube wiring under the house. Y'know, the kind you see in old black-and-white movies where the hot and neutral wires are run separately, about 6 inches apart, with ceramic spacers every few feet? Yup, we've got that all over.

There aren't many outlets in the house; usually just two or three per room, and they're never where you want them. And very few of those are grounded. Oh sure, they have three-pronged outlets because that's what the previous homeowner(s) could find at the hardware store. But they're not actually grounded.

Which wouldn't be a huge problem except that some modern gadgets, such as flat-screen TVs or computers, really want to be grounded. Replacing some outlets with GFCI receptacles protects us, but doesn't protect the electronics. Figuring out how to ground all these outlets (or even some of them) is going to be a trick, especially up on the third floor. The ground is a long way down.