Floating ground ?

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by earlyfilm

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 three wire heavy motors and someone goofed while adding a circuit. I've only seen this in older commercial buildings, not in private homes.)

James

Unless I've seen the wiring done in the home, it's hard to advise anyone.
I re-read the O/P and the owner was probably referring to the receptacles.
They were probably replaced with the newer grounding type. If the home was wired with the old style B/X cable, there might be, somewhat of a ground, but not a perfect one. If you meter the hot wire to the box, you'll get a reading.
If the home has knob and tube wiring or the old style romex without the ground wire and the receptacles, were replaced with grounding ones, it's a code violation.
Buy one of those simple, three light receptacle testers and it'll will indicate if the receptacle is wired properly.