Old house, No ground.

We recentely moved into a house. The origional part of the house is about 90 years old. The addition is about 40-50 years old. The old part has maybe one two prong recepticle, while the rest have 3 prong recepticles. My problem is this: I have a band. I play the guitar, and my brother plays the bass. I have heard that some musicians have been playing thier guitar or bass, on ungrounded outlets, and have been killed by voltage suddenly running through the amp, and into the guitar. We play out in the garage. The garage is wired to the newer part of the house, and it has ground, but the outlets in the garage are wired with the old two wire cable, but are three prong. How can I ground these outlets and keep me and my brother and anyone else for that matter, safe from being killed? I know it is unsafe to run a ground wire from the ground on the outlet to a metal stake in the ground. Do I have to run a ground wire back to the house, and wire it in with an existing ground in the wiring?

Jon Keffer

 

Unless the two wires are run in a particular type of metal casing then you must either replace the cable or run a separate ground wire all the way back to the main panel and connect this new wire to the same place as the other grounds and returns are connected.

You may want to consider running new wire anyway, as your electrical requirements may be more than the current circuit can handle, so you may want a new circuit or two.

 

You could replace the receptacles with GFCI receptacles. If they are all on the same circuit you might only need to replace one of them. One GFCI can be connected to protect all the receptacles after it.