24
Spent 45 minutes today tracing a bad ground on a simple residential install in an old house.
The homeowner had updated the wiring in the 70s and tangled it all up with coaxial runs, took me twice as long as a normal house because every outlet I checked had some weird voltage drop, has anyone else run into this kind of mess with older homes?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
henderson.mason7h agoMost Upvoted
Man, you just described my worst day last summer. Old houses with that 70s wiring where they mixed low voltage and line voltage in the same junction boxes are a nightmare. Always start your ground checks right at the main panel and work outward, that saves you from chasing phantom drops all day. A good trick is to use a long extension cord as a known good ground reference to compare against. Hope you charged them extra for the headache.
3
brian_coleman5h ago
Extension cord trick is clever but honestly sounds overkill for most grounds.
1