Do lights in a circuit have to be grounded for the whole circuit to be grounded

groundgroundingreceptacle

I have a circuit in my old house (built 1918), it’s gone through many remodels during its lifespan and multiple owners.

This one circuit has no grounded outlets, so I had a look behind the outlet to see what the story was. It appears that all these outlets have copper wires back there, so I picked up some grounded outlets and hooked up the copper wires to the ground not – all to no avail. Now my outlets show “open ground”.

I can’t see any other outlets on this circuit, and it appears everything is fine. The only thing relatively near these outlets are two lights (not a traditional light). They are on the wall, and use a twist/click mechanism to turn on and off. Would these also need to be grounded in order for the whole circuit to be correct?

Thank you

Best Answer

If I'm interpreting your drawing correctly, 3 possibilities (all incorrect under current code) may have existed in the past:

  1. They may have had a 220v line at one time split between 2 cables.
  2. They had 2 cables but a wire got cut or broken so they used a wire from each of the cables to build a circuit.
  3. They paralleled wires from 2 cables for higher current capacity.

I have found all 3 of these in my own 1929 house.

Regardless of which case it is, there's a break in the ground between the breaker panel and the outlet. You'll have to trace the circuit to find the break and correct it. As Isherwood said, your best solution is to rewire that circuit with a single new grounded cable from the panel out.