living with 2 prong outlets?

[snoopy5386]

We are moving into a house that has basically no 3 prong outlets. Who else is in this situation? What do you do? How do you plug in 3 prong stuff? computers, surge protectors, etc? do you use adapters?
thanks!

[Leylla]

Depends...if it's already got grounding wires, then just replace the outlets themselves...

If no grounding wires, then you are spending BIG bucks to have the house rewired.

Or you can do the local yokel thing and break the prong off the plug...However this is not reccomended and is quite dangerous...like putting pennies in the fuse box.

Steph

[Sharlla]

The have converters that are super cheap.

[Snowdrift]

We use few three prong things. We use a few adaptors. We have a couple three-prongs. It works out. You just gotta think ahead when setting up the house.

[ashleyhaugh]

we have like 2 3 prong outlets in the entire house, and theyre both in the kitchen. we use the little 50 cent adapter plug things to plug in the appliances that need them

[Denvergirlie]

Originally Posted by Sharlla

The have converters that are super cheap.

yep, us too. I like the gray ones better just because they are not orange. They cost maybe .50- $1 at any hardware or grocery store.

[box_of_rain]

Ah the joys of ancient houses...

We use the adapters and plug a strip into those.

[zmom]

We have this problem at my house. I spoke with an electrician who said he could replace the outlets (to code) to 3 prong outlets for something like $25 each. Eventually we'll do it because it's a royal PAIN (IMO) to deal with only 2 prong plugs all the time.

[kewb]

Some outlets we changed (like in the kitchen) and some we just use adapters.

[KarenEMT]

We safely used the adaptors (into which we plugged power strips) for years until we could afford a whole-house rewire.

[momto l&a]

We have always used adapters with no problems.

[artemis33]

Ugh, it is kind of a pain. We use the adaptors, but with a curious toddler around it is a problem because I haven't found any outlet covers that work properly on them when you have the adaptors plugged in. We manage, but that is something to consider.

We'll eventually rewire everything or move!

[rainyday]

Is the house is both one story and has an unfinished basement or crawlspace, it's not that hard to change the wiring for the outlets and get them grounded. An electrician will probably drive a copper pole into the ground somewhere outside to ground everything to, and then run new wires to the outlets. Because outlets are generally low to the ground, rewiring them if you can get access from the floor below is pretty easy.

Or you could do what a previous owner of one of our houses did. They grounded a lot of the outlets to the water pipes. The pipes are grounded because they go into the ground, but it does make them corrode a lot faster apparently. I'm pretty sure this is not considered an ideal solution, but the inspector when we bought the house, the insurance inspector, and an electrician all seemed pretty blase about it. None of them were alarmed and said it was awful, so we lived with it for years like that.

[oneKnight]

I'm afraid out new house has this problem.

The inspectors said that none of the GFCI outlets have grounding. Why install those ugly looking things and then not make them work? The box on the outside of the house has a grounding wire going to a stake in the ground, but that has been upgraded. I just assume that the house isn't actually wired for it (it's about 60 years old) and I dunno what we're gonna do. You can plug in three prongs because the outlets were replaced but the grounding isn't actually there - doesn't seem safe to me.

[MCsMom]

We deal with this - a pain in the rear sometimes. We have been going room by room are trying to ground them, but at least changing them from two to three even if they are still ungrounded. We have a ton of those little adapters. What I really wish was just more outlets in general. Our kitchen has exactly one outlet and it is not in a very good place.