I live in an old apartment, ungrounded. Can I make my own grounding?

[FreeLander]

Hello,
I live in Saudi Arabia, in a very old apartment building that does not have a grounding wire, only one hot (220v) and neutral. I'm running a 3,000W AC without a ground and I'm getting worried. how can I ground an ungrounded apartment without much cost?

 

[WorthFlorida]

The purpose of a ground wire is for safety, should a hot wire short to a metal electrical box or in an appliance, a breaker will trip. If it is a 30 watt or 3000w it is all the same, either one is just as dangerous (or not dangerous). Wattage consumed has no effect on safety, high voltages do. If you. are on the first floor and the electrical panel is on an exterior wall, you could run one. Drill through the usually concrete block wall, hammer in a ground rod, if at all possible with rock hard ground. Also the electrical panel need a terminal block for grounding. Now how do you get a ground to the receptacle for the AC unit. Is it a three prong unit or direct wired? Being an old building I suspect you have only a two prong outlet. Buildings there use a flex conduit in the concrete walls and floors and it will be nearly impossible to run any wires. If it is ridged metal conduit, then it is possible.

Where in Saudi? I was in Jedda in 1978 and the ground is bone dry. A ground rod won't help any. Some areas have a central water system, look for fire hydrants then there is a possible ground if they are metal pipes. Most homes and apartment have water towers on the roof. Also, look at the breaker panel. Remove the cover and look for a ground bar and if any that go to a ground rod. Do not confuse it for the neutral bar. Another issue is depending on the contractor and country that built the building. Europe and North American use different colors for all three (hot, neutral, and ground) wires. Codes usually were based on the country of the contractor. Either way the ground wire will be green or green/yellow for all countries.

Wiring Color Codes Infographic | Color Codes | Electronics Textbook

Read about Wiring Color Codes Infographic (Color Codes) in our free Electronics Textbook

www.allaboutcircuits.com

Typical breaker panel for North America. Depending on the country the panel was manufactured in, basically it will be the same however in a small apartment, only one hot wire may be connected as you have and the panel will only have one buss instead of two.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[John Gayewski]

Run a wire from the ground pin on the ac plug to a rod pounded into the ground.

 

[FreeLander]

The purpose of a ground wire is for safety, should a hot wire short to a metal electrical box or in an appliance, a breaker will trip. If it is a 30 watt or 3000w it is all the same, either one is just as dangerous (or not dangerous). Wattage consumed has no effect on safety, high voltages do. If you. are on the first floor and the electrical panel is on an exterior wall, you could run one. Drill through the usually concrete block wall, hammer in a ground rod, if at all possible with rock hard ground. Also the electrical panel need a terminal block for grounding. Now how do you get a ground to the receptacle for the AC unit. Is it a three prong unit or direct wired? Being an old building I suspect you have only a two prong outlet. Buildings there use a flex conduit in the concrete walls and floors and it will be nearly impossible to run any wires. If it is ridged metal conduit, then it is possible.

Where in Saudi? I was in Jedda in 1978 and the ground is bone dry. A ground rod won't help any. Some areas have a central water system, look for fire hydrants then there is a possible ground if they are metal pipes. Most homes and apartment have water towers on the roof. Also, look at the breaker panel. Remove the cover and look for a ground bar and if any that go to a ground rod. Do not confuse it for the neutral bar. Another issue is depending on the contractor and country that built the building. Europe and North American use different colors for all three (hot, neutral, and ground) wires. Codes usually were based on the country of the contractor. Either way the ground wire will be green or green/yellow for all countries.

Wiring Color Codes Infographic | Color Codes | Electronics Textbook

Read about Wiring Color Codes Infographic (Color Codes) in our free Electronics Textbook

www.allaboutcircuits.com

Typical breaker panel for North America. Depending on the country the panel was manufactured in, basically it will be the same however in a small apartment, only one hot wire may be connected as you have and the panel will only have one buss instead of two.

View attachment 84284

That seems like alot of work and beyond my skills. Excuse my ignorance, but say I have a device that draws 3000W connected to a 240V and is fed 13Amps with a 30amp breaker. and this device is not grounded. If I routinely touched the device with a metal multiple times a day in an attempt to discharge any charges, would that prevent it from building a charge and getting shorted?

 

[wwhitney]

Since you are in a country whose electrical practices are not familiar to me (and I assume most of us), you'll have to provide some background information about your electrical system, some of which you may have to research locally. Namely:

- Do you have a box with overcurrent devices within your apartment, and does all power used in the apartment go through it?
- How many wires are in the supply to that box?
- What is the voltage between each pair of wires on the supply?
- Are any of those wires earthed before they come into the apartment? If so which ones?

Cheers, Wayne

 

[wwhitney]

Run a wire from the ground pin on the ac plug to a rod pounded into the ground.

Doing that is almost never helpful, and depending on the circumstances, thinking that it is helpful instead of doing the correct bonding/earthing may be harmful.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[John Gayewski]

Doing that is almost never helpful, and depending on the circumstances, thinking that it is helpful instead of doing the correct bonding/earthing may be harmful.

Cheers, Wayne

Doing that is almost never helpful, and depending on the circumstances, thinking that it is helpful instead of doing the correct bonding/earthing may be harmful.

Cheers, Wayne

Why would adding a ground not be helpful? They make a listed adapter for it. At best its a bad description of adding a ground.

 

[wwhitney]

Why would adding a ground not be helpful? They make a listed adapter for it. At best its a bad description of adding a ground.

In the US, earthing is done at the service entrance, and adding an earth connection at the end of the branch circuit would not be typical. If there's already proper earthing at the service, the extra ground rod isn't going to do much; and if there isn't, then you'd bre asking the one ground rod and the circuit EGC to do all the earthing for the service.

The main job of the EGC is actually bonding all the metal that shouldn't be energized together, and connect it back to the neutral service conductor via the main bonding jumper at the service (the only neutral-ground connection on US services). So usually when we talk about an "ungrounded" branch circuit, we mean that it has no EGC (bonding conductor).

An isolated connection to earth for a single piece of equipment is arguably not so useful and could introduce lightning-induced failure modes that would be absent with isolated earth connection. So it that sense it's likely a net negative. What really matters is the EGC as a bonding conductor.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[WorthFlorida]

........... If I routinely touched the device with a metal multiple times a day in an attempt to discharge any charges, would that prevent it from building a charge and getting shorted?

I think you conception of electric is a little off. With a perfectly normal 2 wire appliance such as your AC, a charge is never built up. Motors are no longer have the neutral connected to the motor housing. Before double insulated motors were designed the neutral was tied mechanically through the motor winding to the motor housing thus to the metal cabinet. When I was a kid (50-60 years ago), old refrigerators where two wire. In my home I was able to touch the kitchen faucet (copper pipe) and open the refrigerator door. If you felt a slight tingle on the metal door handle, the non polarized two prong plug had to be reversed so the neutral wire was on the correct side of the motor. This is no longer the case.

As I said before, the grounding is wanted to trip a breaker should a short ever occurs. Assume the hot side wire (240v) wire nut came loose and the hot wire was touching the metal housing of the AC unit without a ground, the metal housing would be hot and the breaker will not trip. You can touch the metal housing and not feel a thing. The problem is if you are grounded, such as standing on damp ground or touching a metal pipe or metal conduit that is grounded, then you'll get a shock.

If you have an electric dryer, they are usually 5,000 watts, electric stove/oven even higher.

 

[Reach4]

Why would adding a ground not be helpful? They make a listed adapter for it. At best its a bad description of adding a ground.

In dry areas, a simple ground rod , or even a pair, does not make that good of a ground.

Ground fault GFCI Interrupters (GFCI) can protect people from harmful shock. AFCI breakers can protect against many wire faults, but I think they are still often subject to false tripping.

 

[Jadnashua]

When I was at Ft. Bliss in Texas, when the communications group went out on an exercise, they'd have the kitchen people order lots of extra salt, then, they'd mix it with water and saturate the ground so that they could get a reliable ground. Otherwise, in the desert, it would take a lot of digging and an array to produce a suitable ground for their radio and satellite systems to function well.

In the USA, 240vac doesn't use neutral...I don't know how those places where 220vac is the norm treat the second conductor...in the USA, it is not connected to ground or neutral.

If you wanted it to become safer, you might look into a GFCI device. That does not utilize ground to function. All of the power should go from one power conductor through the device, and return on the other (called a closed circuit). A GFCI monitors the flow, and if it's off by as little as 0.005A, it shuts the power off...that power had to be going to ground, maybe through you, otherwise, it would just complete its path back to the power station on the normal power conductors.

 

[FreeLander]

When I was at Ft. Bliss in Texas, when the communications group went out on an exercise, they'd have the kitchen people order lots of extra salt, then, they'd mix it with water and saturate the ground so that they could get a reliable ground. Otherwise, in the desert, it would take a lot of digging and an array to produce a suitable ground for their radio and satellite systems to function well.

In the USA, 240vac doesn't use neutral...I don't know how those places where 220vac is the norm treat the second conductor...in the USA, it is not connected to ground or neutral.

If you wanted it to become safer, you might look into a GFCI device. That does not utilize ground to function. All of the power should go from one power conductor through the device, and return on the other (called a closed circuit). A GFCI monitors the flow, and if it's off by as little as 0.005A, it shuts the power off...that power had to be going to ground, maybe through you, otherwise, it would just complete its path back to the power station on the normal power conductors.

I like the idea, but how can I discharge the leaking current after the device shuts off?

 

[Jadnashua]

I like the idea, but how can I discharge the leaking current after the device shuts off?

While static electricity can build up...power carrying current just does not 'build up' in things except in something like a capacitor. Shut the power off, there's no current to flow.

While a static discharge might give you a shock, at least in what you might build up in a home, it won't kill you. An internal fault in the a/c unit that allows current to leak if you touched it, could, and that's exactly what a GFCI device is designed to protect you from.

Something like this might work for you. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/personal-protection-electric-function-indicator/dp/B003WL23QI/ref=sr_1_7?crid=3HON4I7KVYD71&keywords=euro+gfci&qid=1655434480&sprefix=euro+gfci+,aps,133&sr=8-7

 

[Reach4]

I like the idea, but how can I discharge the leaking current after the device shuts off?

If you are concerned about annoying shocks from you touching metal devices during dry weather, grounding the metal device will not help. It is you that are charged up, and to drain off the charge, you could touch one side of a high-resistance resistor that has the other end grounded. That will spread out the electron flow to many milliseconds. Or rather than using resistors, you could cause the spark to happen through a ring or maybe keys etc. The spark will snap, but since the hot spot will be at the ring/key/etc, you will not feel the discharge.