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From: wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Grounding old electrics
Message-ID: <186@cfa.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: 1 Sep 89 17:01:13 GMT
References: <360@s5.Morgan.COM>
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> 	I was once told that I could use the metal conduit as the
> 	ground and eliminate the third wire.  Is this true?
 
> [...]  A few years back, I had 3-prong outlets
> that (as I later found out) were connected to a 2-wire plant, with the
> ground attached to the conduit.  Everything was fine for a while. [...]
>   It turns out that somewhere along the line, the hot
> wire had a short to the conduit. [...]

Bad news, but this might have happened with separate ground cable as well,
since the ground wire is usually bare. With hindsight, the proper solution 
is to buy one of those simple testers with LEDs that detect this sort
of short, and to use it periodically on each of your outlets.



Bill Wyatt, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory  (Cambridge, MA, USA)
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