I recently purchased a home built in the late 1950s. ALmost all outlets in the house are 2 prong. Upon further investigation at several outlet boxes, I found that the wiring, although old (it's that old silver colored cable) it does actually have 3 wires , black,white and copper. Looking in the outlet boxes, I can see that they actually took the ground wires and twisted them together. These are all metal boxes btw. I also checked a couple of the ceiling light boxes and found the same. Metal boxes, 3 wire cables, with the grounds twisted together. Of these boxes I checked, some are grounded via a connection to these twisted together ground wires, and some are not. I used a meter and checked from the hot leg, to the ground and it checks out in all cases. next I went to the main breaker panel to see how that end of the circuits was and what I found was that the ground wire in each of these older cables (there are 4 or 5 of them total, leaving the breaker panel) are all actually 'grounded' to the cable connectors on the box, except for one of them, which is appropriately grounded to the ground bar in the breaker panel. Not sure why this was done this way, unless it was a left over from the original,old fuse panel and they didn't want to or couldn't extend this ground wire and attach to So, a couple of questions..... 1- does anyone know why this was done this way (ie. i'm talking about the ground wire being attached to the cable connector where it enters the box, instead of the ground bar 2- is this considered an appropriate ground (thinking the ground wire is connected to the cable connector, which is on the box)? 3- I have no idea why this was done this way as the cable is 3 wire(hot,neutral,ground). The ground is there, but not used in the fashion I would expect it to be 4- TO convert these two prong outlets to 'safe' 3 prong, can I just pigtail at each box the two ground wires in each cable and attach to the ground screw on the new 3-prong outlets AND ground to a ground screw on each box? h

The main power line mounted to the facia on the house has apparently been painted before and the paint is all cracked and peeling. It does not look like the cable insulation is deteriorated, just painted over and cracking paint. It looks pretty terrible. How would I go about safely cleaning/repainting this? Would I need the power company to cut power to the house? Use plastic scraper? It's probably about 30 feet or so of cable. I'm thinking as long as I don't use an aluminum ladder from the ground or just hang over the side of the roof (should be within reach). It's a brick house with fiberglass shingled roof if that matters and aluminum-clad soffit/facia. I'll try to get a pic if possible.