I just moved into a home built in 1955. During inspection, it was noted that none of the outlets were grounded even though they had three prong outlets installed.
Per our agreement, the owner supposedly grounded all the sockets using a licensed electrician. During our final walk through, the owner's general handy man told us he rewired everything. I unfortunately didn't think anything of it.
Come to move in day. The cable installer shows up. When plugging the HDMI cable into the TV, the cable box sparks and catches fire and the TV is dead. Scorched and melted HDMI ports on both end.
The cable installer assumes a bad box, gives me a new box. We try again with new everything (cable box, power cords, HDMI cable, TV). This time we notice the HDMI sparks like mad when making contact with the HDMI port in the TV. Luckily we were wary this time and didn't actually plug the cable in.
At this point I'm suspecting the "unhandy" man botched the grounding on the outlets. I'm getting an electrician out here Monday to take a look. Right now I'm avoiding plugging anything in with a three prong power cord.
Any thoughts? Does my hypothesis sound correct?
Links to pictures. http://imgur.com/a/8sjx1
Suspicions confirmed. The guy didn't even cheat. He hooked the hot wire to the ground, he should of at least used the neutral cable to boot leg it.
Best Answer
This is a very suspicious situation.
Adding a proper ground to every receptacle in the house is no small feat, it's weird that the handyman just casually mentioned that he did it. I believe the only correct way to do it would be to run a new ground wire of the proper size back to the service panel where it can be connected to the grounding rods.
Perhaps the handy man just used pigtails to ground to the box, as @SpeedyPetey says. Or maybe he connected the ground to the neutral, which would be good enough to fool an outlet tester. Or maybe he accidentally connected the ground to the hot side, which might explain your sparks. (Many appliances have their metal housing connected to ground. If the exterior of one of your appliances was actually electrified that would explain the sparks.)
If you have a simple outlet tester you could start with that, but it will not detect all faulty conditions like a ground / neutral swap or connection. You could also shut the power off and pull one of the receptacles off the wall, to see if you can tell what kind of grounding, if any, is actually there.
I suspect you will want to get an electrician and your real estate agent involved.