I have an old house (built in 1962) and after testing all of my outlets, have confirmed that none of them are grounded. The house is made of brick, so it would be extremely expensive to run new circuits through the house. I really only need 1 or 2 outlets to be grounded so that I can protect my expensive equipment from damage. So what I wanted to know is if I could buy a spool of 10 gauge solid copper core insulated grounding wire, drill a hole through the brick behind the outlet, connect to the outlet and run the other end of the wire around the outside of the house to the main box. Would that be safe? Would it hold up to power spikes?
Yes you can do that but you don't have to go to the box if you have metal cold water pipe. If the pipe is plastic then yes but you cpuld drive a metal stake into the ground 6 feet and ground to it. you can get grounding stakes at a hardware store or electrical supply so find out which is cheaper wire or stake. on the wire it doesn't have to be solid just #10 and daisy chain it. go from the farthest box outside to the scond box then to the Elecrtical supply. I assume you have a slab floor if not go to the basement and across to the box or attic to the box. An alternate solution is to just change the sockets and don't ground them. it is not really necessary most equipment has planned for an ingrounded socket. you change the socket so it will plug in without cutting off the ground pin. For GFI it is necessary to ground it(kitchen and bathroom). different states have different codes.
1962 is not that old. You will likely have circuit breakers rather than fuses. Your service entrance must be grounded (or the utility would not have provided service). (1) Your branch circuits should be supplied by BX (armored cable, either AWG#14 or AWG#12) the cable armor is the ground path back to the fuse or breaker panel. If your house is wired with ROMEX (amateur work) the ROMEX (plastic covered cable) it should have three conductors: black, white, and green. Green is the ground conductor. (2) Many Service Entrances (fuse, or circuit breaker distribution panels) are grounded to water mains. However, many water meters are installed with Dresser Couplings (Rubber insulated compression fittings) which are non-conductive. The ground connection must be made on the street side of the water meter (if you use a public water supply). It's more likely that you have a poor ground path than no ground path. Ground rods driven into the earth are helpful but generally poor.
