Is your house appropriately grounded? We all need to take various safety measures when moving into a new house and one of those is ensuring that the house is adequately grounded or earthed.
Grounding or earthing refers to sending electrical connections from the house to the earth. And its one giant step you can take to ensure that the house is safe for you and your family to live in.
So, right now, start doing the right thing.
Here’s how much it cost to ground a house
To have your house grounded, you would spend, on average, $8,000 to $9,000 for the entire project. However, this amount isn’t set in stone. So, if there’s little room for negotiation, then discuss with the proposed electrician assigned to do the job.
Keep reading for more information on grounding a house.
House Grounding: What It Means
Grounding is a popular principle of electricity and one that confuses many homeowners. And it’s something every house should have, regardless of where your property is.
Grounding gives excess electricity the safest and most practical route. It sends it to the ground.
Therefore, grounding is one sure way to ensure your appliances at home or in the office, including the health and safety of your family members living in the said house, are safe.
When you ground your house, you’re telling the excess electrical current where it needs to go, not into your body or electrical appliances. The excess current won’t cause any damage once sent to the earth.
How To Find Out If Your House Is Grounded
Even though you aren’t an electrician, you can still determine if the current in your house is grounded or not.
But you have to be careful when dealing with electrical current. You don’t want to touch a naked wire with your bare hands. You can easily get electrocuted.
So, how can you determine if your house current is grounded or not?
Check your power outlets. If they have two-prongs, your house is not grounded. But, if the outlets are three prongs and you find three wires connected into each of the slot, then your house is grounded.
You will discover that many old houses aren’t grounded. So, if you’re moving into an old building make sure you find out before moving in with your properties and family members.
If the house isn’t grounded, you may need an electrician to have it rewired. The process could take time and you don’t want to leave your family without electricity for a couple of hours.
Note – You have to test all the outlets and ensure they are all grounded. Not all the outlets in your home might be grounded. And failure to check and correct this problem could be a disaster.
How To Know If Your House Is Grounded Using A Circuit Tester
Using a circuit tester, you can determine if your house is grounded or not. This is how to go about it.
You will see a smaller and larger slot on your outlet. Now put the tester’s red and black probe into the smaller and larger outlet slot, respectively.
If the outlet in question is grounded, indicator would light up. But if the light on the indicator doesn’t come up, change the tester’s red and black probe position.
If the indicator light comes up after changing the probes, the outlet is grounded. The problem is it was wired in reverse order.
However, if the indicator doesn’t come up after reversing the probes’ position, then the outlet isn’t grounded.
Grounding A House: What Are The Benefits?
Your electrical appliances come up when plugged into the outlets. Your light bulbs also do the same thing. So, why on earth do you need to ground your house?
It seems strange hearing your electrician talk about grounding your house and considering how much it would cost you to have it done. But the truth of the matter is that grounding is necessary.
Here are some of the benefits you need to know about house grounding.
Direct electricity adequately:
Grounding makes it possible for electrical power to move straight to where you need it. Electrical currents would be able to move through your electrical systems safely.
Prevent the loss of life, injury, or damage:
Properly grounding your house would prevent your electrical appliances from being damaged beyond repair.
Power overload could also cause a fire outbreak and damage properties that worth a hundred times more than the amount of money required to ground the house properly.
Ensure voltage stability:
Ask the electrician hired to ground your home about one of the benefits of grounding a house. You will undoubtedly hear “voltage stability.”
Grounding helps to ensure that the electrical power generated is distributed to the places they are needed in the right amount.
As such, your circuits won’t be overloaded or blown from time to time, adding to your bills. When your house is grounded, the excess current is sent to the earth, keeping your life and appliances safe.
The earth is a superior conductor:
The essence of grounding a house is to have a place to deposit the excess electrical current that sometimes spring up.
And earth is the perfect place to send excess electricity that travels through your electrical circuits now and then. The reason is that the earth happens to be a good conductor. And you’re not endangering anyone by driving your ground wire into the earth.
Tackles surge in electricity:
No one has the power to prevent lightning strikes from taking place. The best we can do is to protect ourselves and our appliances.
When lightning strikes, it could produce an unusually high voltage that could travel through your outlets and damage whatever appliance is plugged in when the lightning occurred. But with proper grounding, your house and appliances would be safe.
Conclusion
If your outlets are two-pronged, and that is making you worried, you have to relax your mind. Many individuals have lived in houses with two-prong outlets safely for years and nothing went wrong. The two-prong means the outlet isn’t earthed.
However, if you care about yourself, your relatives, appliances, and properties, and don’t want to take chances, then make grounding your house a top priority. At this point, you should know the benefits of grounding.
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