Outlet Grounding in Seattle

Protecting Your Home & Your Family

Is your home properly grounded? One way to check is to look at your existing outlets. If they look like the "no ground" image to the right, your outlets are not grounded. If your outlets are not grounded, you and your family are at risk of electrical shock, and your appliances and electronics are at risk. There are a couple of different ways to meet code with grounding.

One is to install a ground wire at every outlet. To do this, you would either rewire all of the outlets or pull a stranded ground wire from box to box. The rewire method is recommended since the labor is the same cost. Our Seattle electricians can handle this process quickly and efficiently.

The second option is to GFCI-protect the circuits or individual outlets. You can swap out every outlet in the home that is ungrounded with a GFCI outlet and the GFCI outlet can act as a physical ground. Another way to GFCI-protect is to install GFCI breakers. The breakers act the same as a GFCI outlet but they control all of the outlets/lights hooked to the breaker.

Why Use Ground Rods

Ground rods are also essential. Below is an image of what a ground rod looks like. NEC code requires two eight-foot rods driven into the ground. If you want to check your system, go out to your electrical meter and search for them in the ground. Usually, there is a copper wire coming out of the home down into the ground to connect them to the electrical panel. If you have no ground, you owe it to yourself to have a technician look over your electrical system.