Hello, My grow room in process has an older 12/2 wire running into the room that does not have the ground wire. Is it all right to tie my new wires into this with the new ground wire just terminating in the junction box in my room? Or would I be better off removing the old wire and running new 12/2 with ground from the breaker box?
-
Happy Birthday ICMag! Been 20 years since Gypsy Nirvana created the forum! We are celebrating with a 4/20 Giveaway and by launching a new Patreon tier called "420club". You can read more here.
-
Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!
Electrical Question, 12/2 wire without the ground wire.
- Thread starter MTRUM75
- Start date
Electricity and water with no ground strikes me as dangerous. Ground that puppy.
homebrew420
Member
It wouldn't be all that much better save yourself the time and buy a GFCI. this is a NEc, National Electric Code solution for circuits without a ground. It will be protected in the same way. Hope this helps.
Peace
Peace
S
sparkjumper
You may regret putting HID lighting on GFI circuits,especially ones protected by a GFI breaker.I've heard throughout the years and know from experience that they often will trip with a HID lighting load for no good apparent reason.What I would do is use the circuit thats already there run for you.Is the box plastic or metal?If metal I would bond the box with the ground and wrap the receptacle good with elec tape.Thats what I would do
I'm will not run my electricty half assed, it will be done correctly. If it requires me running new wire to my breaker box, that is what I will do. Both lines I am running into my room have a GFCI on the first outlet. One is 20A 12/2 romex with ground all the way to the breaker. The one in question is 15A with 12/2 romex with out ground.
Randude101 I am not sure exactly what you are saying here? (run a conductor from the equipment to ground in the case of a missing ground in a power wire)
Randude101 I am not sure exactly what you are saying here? (run a conductor from the equipment to ground in the case of a missing ground in a power wire)
If you can run a new Romex cable (12-2 w/ ground) from your panel, just do it. There's really no sense fucking around with anything else if you can easily replace the NO-ground cable with a cable with a ground.
PC
touchofgrey
Active member
Randude is referring to a work around method for getting a ground in a circuit by running a separate single conductor from your box in the grow room to a ground, like a metal plumbing line or the ground bar in your panel. Like he says, it's not ideal but it will work. If you have good access the best solution is to run a new circuit back to the panel.
madpenguin
Member
I'm curious as to what do you mean by "older wire"? What's it look like? Does it have an outer metal sheath but with cloth insulated conductors? That would be BX cable and it actually does have a ground. It's a small aluminum 18 gauge wire that they terminate outside of the gang box by wrapping it around the metal sheathing, so you can't actually see it.
You really need a multimeter to test if you have a ground or not. If you have actual breakers in the panel and not fuses, you can do a quick test to see whether or not your metal gang box is grounded or not. I hate to advocate doing this, but if you don't have a volt meter or multi meter and for some reason don't want to buy one, pull the neutral wire out of the box and wire nut it off. Then have the hot wire exposed and grab the cloth part of the conductor with a pair of pliers. Get off to the side, put some safety glasses on, and touch the exposed part of the hot wire to the frame of the metal junction box. If sparks fly everywhere and the circuit goes dead, then the metal box is grounded.
You'll need to snip any damaged wire off the hot conductor and then go flip the breaker back on but that's one way to test if your metal gang box is grounded. Again, I don't advocate doing that, but I've been guilty of doing it myself a few times just because I didn't want to go down 3 flights of stairs to turn the breaker off to work on it. In that case, I'll just cross the hot wire with a neutral or a known ground.
Yea, as long as the box is grounded, look for a hole in the back of the box. It should be pre-drilled to accommodate one of these:
When you run your new wire out of the box, leave quite a bit of conductors sticking out the front. Enough of the bare grounding conductor to attach to the back of the box with one of those screws (wrap it around the screw and tighten it down) and then still have enough bare grounding conductor to stick about 3 inches out of the box. Cut your other conductors off so they then match the length of the grounding conductor. Then wire up the receptacle.
Again, that depends on how "old" the existing wire is. You would need to correctly identify the era of the wiring. If you want to be anal and it's easy to rip the old stuff out and replace it with new, then that's always a sound idea. Newer romex is rated to handle much higher temperatures than any other era wiring. Plus, you know your starting off with undamaged brand new copper wiring. Always a good feeling.
Up to you.
homebrew420
Member
If it is that easy, for peice of mind, just run some new wire. Grounding to some abitrary box that happens to be metal will most likely NOT give you a ground unless it too is grounded. There is no reference. It is isolated. I have heard the same about GFCI and ballasts not being overly comparable. I have ont seen this to be true though I also have not had to install them for ballasts either. With motors GFI's do not last very long, the fields generated in the windings cause interference with the electronics of the GFI and give it false ground fault detecting. THis may happen with a ballast. Probably just run a new circuit if you can. Run a few save time later. Ha. Hope this helps.
Peace
madpenguin
Member
Just wanted to add, if your working with a metal box, you can also use one of these instead of the green grounding screw.
You sandwich the wire between the clip and one of the outer edges of the metal box.
I didn't catch this. You have an extremely easy and accesible place to just rewire everything. If you can spare the cash, I'd probably just yank the entire run and start over with new wire. It's really the safest option.
You sandwich the wire between the clip and one of the outer edges of the metal box.
I didn't catch this. You have an extremely easy and accesible place to just rewire everything. If you can spare the cash, I'd probably just yank the entire run and start over with new wire. It's really the safest option.
As MP pointed out, many of those old systems with no romex ground have an 18 or 20 gauge bare copper wire running through the whole house attached to the outside of the metal boxes.
But, if everything is easily accessible, peace of mind is well worth the cost & time of installing a new cable.
JMO
PC
