Heimiko, You need to hire an electrician immediately to ground your outlets - at least the ones where you have devices with metal enclosures plugged in, but preferably all of them.
To save money you can alternatively install GFI breakers directly in place of a 2-prong outlet, instead of installing a ground wire. This is NOT going to protect from an uncomfortable shock, but it will prevent lethal currents. The national US electric code allows this, although local building codes sometimes require all GFIs to be grounded. You don't need one for every outlet, only the first one on each circuit. Running an external ground wire to a radiator is probably better than nothing in your situation, but it's not ideal and it's not up to code. _Cold_ water pipes are OK, provided you know that the piping is all metal (i.e. no PVC anywhere). The connection should be made in the crawl space or in the wall though, not by running wires in the living spaces. Given your situation, the best solution is probably to establish a new ground "bus" for the whole house, consisting of a heavy gauge wire connected to the main breaker panel and going the shortest possible route from the one end of the house to the other. Then tie all the outlets onto that. This will provide the lowest possible resistance from any outlet to earth, and to each other. Make sure the main breaker panel is tied with heavy copper wire to a proper ground rod driven into the soil. Also if you have sub-panels, make sure that the _neutral_ bus (white wires) is NOT connected to ground in the subpanel. It should only be tied to ground at a single point in the main panel. I'm not an electrician and this is by no means a complete checklist of what to fix. Good luck! Sean -- seanadams ------------------------------------------------------------------------ seanadams's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38480 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
