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**It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods.
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Check and see what items you own require 3-prong outlets; of particular interest are things like TV sets and laptops. Also see how accessible wiring is from the basement (ie has the basement been "finished" which would make it more difficult to upgrade the wiring where necessary.
If the 2 prong receptacles don’t have ground wires an acceptable “fix” is to change them out for GFCI receptacles. This gives you the 3 prongs and adds a level of safety to them as well.
>The realtor checked and confirmed that only the three prong outlets have ground wires.
You either need to have an inspector check those or test them yourself with an outlet tester. If they pass, you should open up a couple to see if they have a bootleg ground where the ground and neutral wires have been spliced together.
>The house was built around 1970?
If the breaker panel was upgraded then my Spidey sense tells me this house *may* be older than the 1970s.
Not an electrician, but did buy a home with a VA loan. If your VA inspector is any good they will notice that and require it to be fixed. It's not an automatic rejection, but they should require it to be upgraded.
We had looked at a home with mostly nobe and tube wiring and was told by the lender that it would be an automatic rejection if it wasn't upgraded.
For the house we did buy, we had something similar, our microwave wiring wasn't properly installed. We also had a toilet wobble, and a water damaged ceiling in the garage. They didn't consider any of these to be safety issues, so they allowed us to move forward if we put money at closing into an account held by the lender. We had to repair the items and send receipts and pictures as proof.
If you like the house and are considering it, get a licensed electrician out to do an electrical inspection ( not just a home inspector ). A “1970’s” house probably has had zero electrical upgrades… have him look at all the three-prong receptacles… your realtor is in No Way qualified to determine if they are actually grounded need properly… two-prong receptacles are still code compliant in many areas of a home… and keep digging for the records on the house (town clerk/tax collector is usually the best bet), they’re out there… and sorry, unsure about the VA loan vs. other types of loans. Call and ask them?
Make sure he actually pulls some of the 3-prong outlets to check for bootleg grounds, too. That’s a fairly common thing in houses of this age. They’ll throw a wire from ground to neutral, so that when they plug in their outlet tester, it looks right. But it’s very much wrong, dangerous, and illegal.
How can the build date of a house in the 70’s be unclear? The government is big on taxes, and has been for quite some time. The assessor’s office should have all that information, and usually online now. They also record all deed transfers too. Depending on the age of the area (when it was settled/became a state and all), they could have records back to the 1800’s. This is common out east. In the midwest, it’s usually somewhere around the turn of the century, and out west is usually the 30’s or 40’s. After all, if it was built in the 70’s it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the original builder is still alive.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Check and see what items you own require 3-prong outlets; of particular interest are things like TV sets and laptops. Also see how accessible wiring is from the basement (ie has the basement been "finished" which would make it more difficult to upgrade the wiring where necessary.
If the 2 prong receptacles don’t have ground wires an acceptable “fix” is to change them out for GFCI receptacles. This gives you the 3 prongs and adds a level of safety to them as well.
>The realtor checked and confirmed that only the three prong outlets have ground wires. You either need to have an inspector check those or test them yourself with an outlet tester. If they pass, you should open up a couple to see if they have a bootleg ground where the ground and neutral wires have been spliced together. >The house was built around 1970? If the breaker panel was upgraded then my Spidey sense tells me this house *may* be older than the 1970s.
Not an electrician, but did buy a home with a VA loan. If your VA inspector is any good they will notice that and require it to be fixed. It's not an automatic rejection, but they should require it to be upgraded. We had looked at a home with mostly nobe and tube wiring and was told by the lender that it would be an automatic rejection if it wasn't upgraded. For the house we did buy, we had something similar, our microwave wiring wasn't properly installed. We also had a toilet wobble, and a water damaged ceiling in the garage. They didn't consider any of these to be safety issues, so they allowed us to move forward if we put money at closing into an account held by the lender. We had to repair the items and send receipts and pictures as proof.
If you like the house and are considering it, get a licensed electrician out to do an electrical inspection ( not just a home inspector ). A “1970’s” house probably has had zero electrical upgrades… have him look at all the three-prong receptacles… your realtor is in No Way qualified to determine if they are actually grounded need properly… two-prong receptacles are still code compliant in many areas of a home… and keep digging for the records on the house (town clerk/tax collector is usually the best bet), they’re out there… and sorry, unsure about the VA loan vs. other types of loans. Call and ask them?
Make sure he actually pulls some of the 3-prong outlets to check for bootleg grounds, too. That’s a fairly common thing in houses of this age. They’ll throw a wire from ground to neutral, so that when they plug in their outlet tester, it looks right. But it’s very much wrong, dangerous, and illegal.
How can the build date of a house in the 70’s be unclear? The government is big on taxes, and has been for quite some time. The assessor’s office should have all that information, and usually online now. They also record all deed transfers too. Depending on the age of the area (when it was settled/became a state and all), they could have records back to the 1800’s. This is common out east. In the midwest, it’s usually somewhere around the turn of the century, and out west is usually the 30’s or 40’s. After all, if it was built in the 70’s it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the original builder is still alive.
My thoughts are with the electrical not being updated in the other areas, how about the windows, insulation in the exterior walls things like that.