That common grounding trick with the screw and the outlet plate actually caused me a short last month

I was working on a home office setup in a 1950s house near downtown Nashville and used the old trick of grounding through the outlet box screw. Turns out the box wasn't actually bonded to anything, so my test equipment kept throwing errors until I traced it back. Anybody else run into false grounds from trusting the box too quickly?

2 comments

2 Comments

vera_lewis21d ago

Oh man, I used to swear by that screw trick too, figured it was practically foolproof. Then a buddy of mine spent two days chasing phantom noise on his mixing board before we realized the box was just painted over and not grounded at all. Now I always test the actual ground bond before I trust anything, lesson definitely learned the hard way.

blairj5521d ago

Laughing at myself because I once spent a whole afternoon tracking down a ground loop in my home studio only to find out the "grounded" outlet I was using was actually just an old two pronger with a cheater plug that had been painted over three times. Felt like a real genius when I finally pulled the plate off and saw the thing wasn't even connected to anything.