no electricity grounding

[Anonymous user]

so, i lived in an old house which i found now that the electricity don't have grounding,

now, i've been thinking about protecting my electronics device from:

- lightning (which can cause surge damage),

- overvoltage (from faulty electricity source outside)

i know that from this point: no grounding, so there will be no use to using "surge protector/surge arrester," which they need to be grounded to a proper electricity grounding..

could i just use UPS or Stabilizer(AVR) to protect my devices from surge and overvoltage?

i'm planning to set up like this:

electricity source -> stabilizer(avr) -> UPS -> devices

i'm  using  APC  650va UPS,

could someone confirm this?

[Anonymous user]

To make a long story short, you cannot depend upon this working. You should hire an electrician to add the needed ground connection.

To make a long story a little longer:

• A surge protector might still be able to provide some protection if it places an MOV across the hot and neutral connections on the power line. Some models do and others don't. This isn't a feature you'll find advertised on the packaging.
• A better quality UPS (including several models from APC) would have built in voltage regulation/stabilization capability. To my way of thinking this would be the only way to go if you want voltage regulation/stabilization capability without the UPS having to use up its battery. I'm not sure what APC's official stance on connecting a UPS inline with a voltage regulating/stabilizing device would be. My guess is that they wouldn't recommend it.
• Even if you do connect and utilize a voltage regulation/stabilization device, its response time isn't going to be anything like fast enough to "clamp" a surge to a safe level. And that's even assuming it could: voltage regulator/stabilizer devices aren't designed to deal with more than ~±20 volts of variation either way. They can't compensate for the many hundreds or thousands of volts that might be seen in a surge event. (Ferroresonant conditioners might fare a little better here by virtue of how they work, but I'd still not bank on it. Nor am I 100% certain on that.) The only thing here that might (and I do mean "might") save your equipment here are the resistive and inductive characteristics of the transformer found in most voltage regulators/stabilizers. While electricity "wants" to take the path of least resistance and thus a small to moderate surge might go elsewhere to seek a path to ground, larger surges will get where they're going in a destructive way.
• It is likely that your incoming data lines (whether cable or telephone) have some sort of surge suppression or diversion measure in place.
• The transformer in a voltage regulator or stabilizer may be taken out of circuit under "normal" line conditions. The input may be connected directly (or very close to) the output. This is done for better efficiency, as the transformer used isn't anything like 100% efficient.

You may be fortunate enough to find that the junction boxes in your home are grounded. It's unlikely but worth a check. If they do turn out to be correctly grounded, the task of adding a safety ground just got a lot easier.

Under no circumstances should you or anyone else create a so-called false ground. This is an enormously dangerous thing to do as it could result in anything with a grounded cabinet becoming electrically live, should the neutral connection fail anywhere.

[Anonymous user]

thank you for your very complete and comprehensive answers William,

so, there is some questions pop up when i'm thinking about installing a ground,

if you don't mind for a discussion,  and  i'm  sorry,  i'm  a  noob  to  the  electricity

- in order to overcome a overvoltage or a surge, is it enough to just install ground to the main electrical panel, or the ground has to be forwarded to every port and every port in the house? would it sufficient just to hold the "overvoltage" at one point (main electrical panel), what happen if i installed the ground in the main electrical box only?

- can i make an external ground wire and connect it manually to every electric port ground?

- i see, so a stabilizer won't be fast enough to cut the line, i'm thinking to connect my APC  UPS (which has stabilizer/regulator inside) to an external stabilizer/regulator, is this going to "double protection" from overvoltage (the main reason i'm preparing is that happens once in my office, the electrical from the outside is going "crazy" and hits 400 voltage, so there are many air conditioner, tvs, computers fried in that accident, and also i'm preparing if someday a lightning accident occurs too, but i rarely hear or see this for myself) 

(i'm sorry some of my space between words is missing, click the edit, but it's normal in edit mode)

[Anonymous user]

If you are unfamiliar with electricity, the simple and hard truth of the matter is that you must not install (or modify) anything yourself. Mistakes made with electricity can seriously injure or even kill you. Since you seem to be located in Indonesia, you must find out what laws, codes and standards apply to electrical systems there. I am in the United States and electricity is brought to buildings differently here, so I cannot offer you relevant advice. You may be required by law to hire an electrician.

A ground wire (also called a safety ground) is usually connected to every electrical fitting. Otherwise those fittings cannot be considered to have a ground. Here it would come from the service panel and go off to every electrical device (lamp, socket, etc). Again, it might be very different for you. The ground connection that exists within a service panel ultimately goes into the actual ground, usually by way of a conductive metal rod driven several feet into the Earth.

The result of connecting two voltage regulating or stabilizing devices in line with each other is uncertain. Usually it results in undesirable behavior from one or both devices. It will not "double" your protection and may void any warranty those devices have. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to protect against a severe overvoltage situation like the one you mentioned. The same is true of lightning -- a direct or nearly direct strike will not be stopped by any surge protection measure. There's just too much energy to be dissipated.

If you want to learn more about electricity and how to work with it safely, I would suggest looking for schools in your area that offer classes or certifications to become an electrician. You may also find an electrician willing to explain things to you. Sometimes there are also books you can buy on the subject of electricity and wiring. Please don't try to learn by experimenting. You could seriously injure or kill yourself or others.

The problem you see with missing spaces is caused by certain web browsers. Chrome and similar browsers often have a problem with it. Firefox does not seem to.

[Anonymous user]

Thank You William,

yupe, here in indonesia, nowadays home standard has a proper grounding, but my house was built around maybe 70s or early 80s, back then, most of the buildings here only use 2 prongs

yes, from the beginning i'm considering to call an electrician, but now i'm still wondering what options i have, because rewiring all the building would cost me expensive fare, as right now i'm planning to create a proper rod to the ground, and from there create an external line to every ground connection on every fitting i need. (the type of electrical fitting common in here is, two feet for the electricity, and two metal at another side for the ground wire, i'm planning to connect the ground to the metal on the fitting)

the accident is actually happen in my office (the electrical service providers known to do some error wiring that cause major accident for some area, i'm worried someday it would occurs in my house too, although for about 30 years both of that kinda thing and the lightning accident it never happened in my house)

- so, a nearby or a direct lightning hit would not protect electronic devices even if i had surge protection with a proper grounding? (one of my family mentioned, my house should be safe from direct lightning strike, because my house is surrounded by many higher buildings, tree, etc)

- now, about overvoltage (not the lightning accident), what other option i have to overcome an overvoltage situation that is not as big as lightning accident?

- hypothetically speaking, so, a surge protector is not 100% safe from any accident like lightning and overvoltage?

[Anonymous user]

You might be able to have just the one outlet wired up for a proper ground. I wouldn't say it was a good idea, but it could probably be done. I would continue to insist, for your own safety, that someone qualified do the job.

Lightning is very unpredictable. There's nothing that can protect from a direct hit. With a nearby strike the only possible answer is "it depends". I've seen lightning hit the electrical service in a house and leave every electronic device unharmed. Only an old electric fan took any damage. The intensity of lightning strikes also varies, and common surge suppressors have a limit as to how much they can safely divert and for how long. (Common surge protectors use components called MOVs, which are cheap and effective, but they do wear out over time.)

Your APC UPS would protect against minor to moderate overvoltages. In the case of a major overvoltage, the ideal outcome would be the UPS sacrificing itself to protect your equipment. Again, though, large overvoltages are very unpredictable in what they'll do and where the damage will appear. Things that would normally be considered as insulators can turn conductive at higher voltages, including the air gaps between things like relay contacts. I'm not aware of anything that can protect against large overvoltages. (I don't even think an "online" or "dual-conversion" UPS would be guaranteed to provide protection from a large overvoltage.)

If some of the equipment you wish to protect includes a computer system of some kind, I would highly recommend making and keeping a series of backups that you store somewhere else. This way, even if the computer or its environment should be destroyed, you still have your data and software. Another computer could be acquired and recovery would be the work of a few hours at most.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

yup, that's the idea, i'm planning on having the electrician install a ground, and make some centralized port of grounded wires (might have to modify the electric plug so it won't have the voltage feet, just the ground feet, and spreading them all over the places i need to be grounded, i think this is the cheapest way, before i was thinking of using waterpipes, but no luck, although the sanitary out is made of metal, but i think the pipes underwent is non-metal)

i've been talking to an electrician, he said that the UPS, would stop working if the input voltage is over the "limited voltage," so when to voltage is over the limit, the UPS will switch to batteries, now the problem was, how much overvoltage does it take, because even if the power switch to batteries, at some point, the UPS will burnt to stop, now it depends, the time between the UPS burnt and the UPS stopped working, it may posible the overvoltage passing by to the output and fried everything connected to the UPS. but i guess it's always better if we prepared with an UPS, i'm thinking about buying another UPS for another port,

oh by the way, an UPS might protect from a minor overvoltage... how about stabilizer?

i read an article sbout surge protection, that a surge protector still could work without grounding, but not effectively?

and many peripherals these days, like phone charger, doesn't come with a ground feet on it's charger, do you have information regarding why the manufacturer left it without ground connector?

thank you William

(also, you must be notice, i'm sorry for asking too many questions hehe)