Quote:
Originally Posted by radio nut
Talking with a electronics tech. he said that my house could very well have a floating ground.
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He means that some receptacles might be reversed.
With that said, unless you were talking about commercial use, there were no grounded receptacles back then, so any polarized receptacles in the house are modern, and they may be wired wrong.
Back in the day, most electricians did not bother to mark which wire was hot and which was ground, as you could put in the plug either way.
To the best of my knowledge, if the house was built to code, and no new outlets were needed, you could leave in place any wiring that met code when the house was built. The laws governing this vary from community-to-community.
(Floating ground can also refer to 120 taken off a three phase circuit, where neither side of the two wires is grounded. This happened in some early buildings, that had phase heavy motors and someone goofed while adding a circuit. I've only seen this in older commercial buildings, not in private homes.)
James