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Electrical Ground


Posted by John Boy on March 18th, 2004 09:24 PM
In reply to Making your own electrical ground - using a radiator by Dave225 on March 18th, 2004 08:44 AM [Go to top of thread]

Dave lives in an old apartment, how is he going to ground the plug in for the power strip/surge protector for his computer equipment? There is no ground on the outlets. By hooking the ground of the surge protector to the radiator, the path of electricity will go from the radiator, follow the pipe to the boiler that's probably hooked up to the copper water line going passed the jumper wire on the water meter to ground. Or alterate route, after the boiler to the electrical ground on the boiler to the electrical panel.


This affords surge protection, without any expense to the tenant or owner. What are you going to do?

My son went to school in Butte, Montana a rented an apartment that was built around the turn of the 1900's. The natural gas space heater crapped-out and the landlord went to the dump and found another one with cracked heatexchanger. It's a good thing he worked with me in the plumbing & heating trade,and that he caught this defect and raised shit and had it reparied right. The landlords don't want to spend a nickle, and make nothing but profit, even at the expense of public safety.

Getting back to the subject. There use to be an adapter that accepted a 3 prong polarized plug and had 2 prongs going into the outlet and a ground wire that went onto the center outlet cover screw. Remember them little adapters, I have not seen theem for awhile. You would have to find the hot side of the plug with your 110 Volt meter and touch it to the centre cover screw if you get 110 Volts there to ground, then you could use the screw on the plug-in cover for a ground.

Hey, it's better than frazzing your computer equipment.

John Boy

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