Friday, January 11, 2013

GROUNDED!!

Here is a bit of fire prevention for everyone out there, weather it be for your home or workplace. Take it for what it is worth, coming from a parent and fire fighter and avid user of electronics.

Ever use those little adapters to plug a 3 prong (grounded) plug into a 2 prong outlet? How many of you actually take the time to properly attach it? This means taking that little screw that holds the cover plate on and screwing the adapter to the outlet which grounds it. This takes the place the ground prong. I have always known this and usually done this unless I was just temporarily using it, very temporary, like maybe an hour or 2 but continuously supervised. Well my wife did not know this and we had a very close call recently with one of these. Our house is old, very old, the wiring is somewhat more recent but not recent enough to have grounded outlets everywhere, many are just the old 2 prong style, including in the room we use as an "office." She had plugged one of these in to be able to use a 6 outlet strip for her computer and other such things. We had went to NH for the weekend of before Christmas and, from the signs of things, lost power at some point because clocks were flashing and her computer was off. I took that opportunity to properly install the adapter that she had been using as he did not ground it. When I unplugged it, this is what I found:






We got damn lucky.
You see that little metal tab? USE IT! You may not be as lucky as us.

The next day we went to the local harware store and bought several of them, typically they are around $1.00 each, cheap and simple to use but dangerous if not installed correctly. I replaced this one, and a couple others inthe house and made damn sure they were all grounded. Wifey learned a valuable lesson, thankfully not the hard way.

If you use these, please, ground them every time.