I always make sure that this is the case by taking the covers off and pulling them out a tad a little bit. You can see what they’ve done here, I hope you can see it, is they have jumped the ground wire which is the ground connection which is this green screw there. They’ve used a little wire and jumped it to the neutral and what that does is it makes the tester think that the outlet is in fact grounded when it is not. This is an improper way of grounding an outlet…

This is Paul Ferris with A-Action Realty inspection Services. Today I’m inspecting an older house in Dallas, I believe it was built in 1958 I think and a lot of those older houses, when I’m checking them… Let me switch the camera and I’ll show you. When I’m checking the outlets, I use a tester and when both lights the orange lights light up that means that the outlet is working properly and it’s properly grounded.

However in these older houses I always make sure that this is the case by taking the covers off and pulling them out a tad a little bit. You can see what they’ve done here, I hope you can see it, is they have jumped the ground wire which is the ground connection which is this green screw there. They’ve used a little wire and jumped it to the neutral and what that does is it makes the tester think that the outlet is in fact grounded when it is not. This is an improper way of grounding an outlet, the proper way will be to run a copper wire from this outlet all the way to the panel box. Most people when they are flipping houses they don’t want to go through that expense and so they think oh I’ll just do this and it will make it look like is grounded but we as inspectors know to check this and this will go on my report, so this is another great reason to have your home inspected whether if it’s a new home or an old home.

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