How hard is it to replace a 2 prong outlet with a 3 prong?

The sand will turn to glass trapping loose electrons. Glass is an insulator. :^)

Go for it faggot. Work one handed so the current isn't as likely to go across your chest and stop your heart. Check your smoke detector before you go to bed.

kek

forgot picture

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If you are american go for it, 110v isn't dangerous at all.

If the outlets in the house are 2-prong, would that give an indication of the age of the wiring? A friend moved into a new (to him) house a few years back, (house was probably built in the 60s or 70s.) I recall him commenting all the outlets were 2-prong, and they wound up having to get the wiring redone.

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Just ground the outlet to the box if it's not an old work box.

Check if the box is grounded, then run a pigtail from the box to the ground on the outlet.

OP here, just moved in to a somewhat old house, guessing built in the 70s, which has had various work done and has a mix of both 2 prong and 3 prong outlets.

The room I'm sitting in has 4 sets of outlets total, one pair is 2 prong, another pair is 3 prong.

Would prefer they all be 3 prong so my PC and entertainment setups aren't confined to just one end of the room.

This is resoundingly bad advice. You *must* make sure the box is actually grounded first.

>guessing built in the 70s
Do you not know? My house was built in 1904. When I bought it, I was given every dead of sale going back to the original sale.

3 prong outlets require live and neutral from the panel (which you have) and also a ground, which is bonded at the panel to a true ground. You probably don't have this. Explaining how to check this is not something I can safely do over the internet. My best advice is find a friendly electrician and get him to come and do the inspection/conversion, all the while explaining what's going on. This way you can work on other outlets.

holy shit i hope they rebuilt three quarters of it.

how do i check if the box is grounded?

look to see if it's on the ground

I didn't buy the house, simply moved in to a section of it.
The building owner is fine we me getting carpet installed so I assume they would be ok with some minor electrical work too.

>room has both 2 and 3 prong outlets.
Fucking I know this god damn feel. My house was built in the 1940s and has rooms where some are split like that. Its like the previous owner went to the trouble of rewiring it and then only replaced a few outlets.

I haven't checked for a ground so maybe I'm just getting memed. Best call an electrician to get that fixed up for ya.

If for some weird reason you have a ground available inside the box it's easy. Otherwise it's a lot of climbing around running new romex back to the breaking box. If you don't have a ground in your breaker box then you have to deal with the power company. Depending on your local regulatory agency they may require you to be a licensed electrical contractor to get the necessary permit.

I'll tell you what this would be like where I'm at. You can get an owner's permit by saying roughly I'm the owner, I'm doing the work, and I know what I'm doing. You pay the permit fee and get your permit. You call the electrical company and say I need the power cut to my house to do electrical work and I need to modify the meter pan. They will come and cut the power to your house at the pole. With this permit you can break the seal and remove the meter. You shove a ground rod or 2 in the ground and bond your meter pan, neutral, and breaker box. You reassemble the meter pan and call inspector. He comes and inspects it and gives a pass fail. Your shit has to the new standards so don't be surprised if he says something like your meter pan isn't up to standards you need another. So then you go spend a couple hundred on the stuff to redo it and he comes out the next day provided you get it done that fast. He passes you and you call the electric company. They're all cool the next lineman slot we have is 2 days from now. We'll turn you back on then. They turn the power back on. Then you can run your new romex through the attic, make the drop and replace your outlet.

It’s pretty simple. But unless your outlet has been wired for a ground you will need to use a GFCI instead of a standard grounded receptacle.

Lol no don’t assume. Changing the carpet won’t burn your property down. Unless you want to get sued for arson get your fucking landlord to make this change.

it's pretty easy, the only thing you need to know is that the big middle prong is called the ground

just take a bucket and fill it with dirt, and then stick what's called a "grounding rod" into that, and then wire the ground terminals up to the rod.

you can hide the bucket anywhere in your house really, and you can use multiple if you want.

Just move

Unironically this

Don't let this happen. youtube.com/watch?v=XfAPkJVYUpY

Top fucking kek

Or you could get a 2 prong to 3 prong little adapter 2 pack for like $2.00. The 3rd prong ground gets screwed into the outlet face plate. So remove faceplate screw, plug in adapter, replace screw. Works the same plus the screw helps keep the adapter plugged into the outlet. I got some old 2 prong only outlets in my basement.

If the wire coming into the box doesn't have a bare copper grounding wire then you're fucked. Proceed to run new wiring.

Just in case you or anyone else in this thread is too dumb to understand most of these anons are joking...

NO DO NOT ATTEMPT DO IT YOURSELF

The third prong (that the original plug lacks) is for a ground. In an emergency situation, if too much current is generated (like if a lightning bolt hits your house or whatever you have plugged in malfunctions), the current will go to the ground instead of your fucking hand or the wiring in your wall which could get hot enough to catch your house on fire.

It is called a ground because the grounding wire is connected to a pole in the ground. When a ground is triggered, the current is sent literally into the ground where it is harmless because the earth is so massive that whatever huge current may have been triggered will dissipate quickly. Dirt itself has no special properties here, so "grounding" your circuit in a bucket of dirt doesn't do shit because your bucket of dirt is small enough that the huge current will not dissipate.

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Doesn’t do shit. No ground means your electronics are at the mercy of fuck all

do not do this

>>/sqt/

Two prong outlets must be replaced with a GFCI outlet and identified with a "no equipment ground" label or you have to run a ground wire to the new outlet(s).

That's not at all what a ground is for. A lightning strike is so fast that the local ground is raised to hundreds of volts.

A ground is for cases where the casing of an appliance is energized. This happens in tue majority of faults, and since the casing is grounded it should cause the breaker to trip. A grounding conductor is also essential for the reliable operation of a gfci, which works detecting a difference between current across the hot side and grounded (neutral) side of a circuit. If more than 10mA ends up somewhere other than neutral it trips. The grounding conductor provides plenty of opportunity for this to happen, which reduces the risk of a fault happening between the hot and neutra onlyl, which a gfci can't detect.

If your house isn't grounded, you're going to have to call an electrician. It'll be expensive as fuck because they'll have to run new wires for the entire house.

If -some- of the outlets in the house are 3 prong, does that mean the house is already grounded?

Or could it mean the existing 3 prong outlets aren't actually grounded and are dangerous to use?

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>Or could it mean the existing 3 prong outlets aren't actually grounded and are dangerous to use?
Could be either one. You can get a cheap tester to check. Pic related.

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It actually could be either one. If a home owner doesn't give a fuck they could have just switched the two prong outlets with three prong without any regard for safety. On the other hand if part of the house had a major renovation that part of the house will be required to meet current electrical standards so the electricians should have run a ground wire to that part of the house.

If you have any doubts and do not feel comfortable messing with electrical stuff call an electrician.

>aren't actually grounded and are dangerous to use
Grounding is a meme. Nothing in my country is grounded and nothing bad has ever happened. You guys must be idiots if lack of grounding causes accidents over there.

As an electrician, call an electrician.
The fact you came here to ask any question means you're not equipped to handle this.

Sure, I was planning on asking an electrician anyway

Don't want to spent a huge chunk of $ if something is simple enough that I could follow a tutorial and do it myself, sounds like that's not the case here.

I don't get it, isn't the third prong just there to help the plug stay in the wall?

>nothing bad has ever happened
Nah, you just aren't aware of it. Maybe your place doesn't run statistics on this or something?

Obviously even countries with grounding have electrical accidents, it just reduces the loss of life if the current gets interrupted quickly.

That won't work in the dangerous case of .

It's honestly not difficult assuming you live in a one story and can access the wiring

just connect ground to neutral lmao, fault safety is for nerds

>turns off the breaker for a simple outlet swap
>calls others pussies

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I know this is Jow Forums, but I'm not suicidal. At least not yet.