![]() ![]() Posted by jumpfroggy at 12:24 PM on February 22, 2010 But that's what I understand of it so far. I'm not an electrician - all this could be completely wrong. So for that brief period, you could still get zapped, which is the point of having a grounding plug in the first place. It might shut off in the event of a short, but it doesn't seem like it could provide a route for the shorted volts to escape through. So having a UPS there will prevent spikes, etc, but probably wont protect against shorts. It'll still cause trouble, but it's safer than using yourself as a grounding plug. So instead of 110v on the case of your PC that you touch & get zapped, the grounding plug pulls the volts away from the case so you don't get shocked. Side note - the grounding plug is like a lightning rod for shorts - if a short happens, the ground plug sucks all the volts away so it doesn't reach you. I'd be more worried about the house burning down then the PC burning up. If you truly have an ungrounded outlet (even the housing is not grounded), I'd look into rewiring the house. I'd ask someone with experience, or a licensed electrician to do this for you (or at least look over your shoulder while you learn). HOWEVER, you have to do this safely, and there's a lot that goes into that. These can be had cheap (about $1 or so at homedepot?), and are relatively easy to install. The better solution is to replace the 2-prong outlet with a 3-prong outlet. It's a temporary (and fragile) solution, but it's a bit more "safe" than having no grounding outlet. ![]() This is because that screw contacts the outlet housing, which is grounded. You screw this into the middle screw of the outlet - the one that normally holds the faceplate on. You can use a 2-to-3 prong adapter, which includes a little screw hole tab. the metal outlet box inside the wall is grounded), but you can't get to it through the plug. I'm guessing you might meant that your outlets lack a ground plug, so they're only 2 prong. Posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:15 AM on February 22, 2010 In your shoes, I would find a way to get that outlet grounded. But there is a risk involved, and it could result in injury or death. Better UPSes run the computer off of the batter full time, and work to keep the battery charged, so this is less of a concern. Back to point 2, if the voltage goes high for a bit and gets dumped to ground by the surge strip, things can get exciting. This will produce some ringing and other funny behavior that may or may not be problematic when the UPS kicks in. This isn't as useful as it sounds since any good power supply will deal with a variable signal anyway - the rectifiers should fix it - but this also implies that there will be some period of time between power going low/out and the battery providing backup. There are UPSes that filter the incoming signal and clean it up (I think the 350 is one of them). If it is dumping excess voltage into the ground which is tied to your computer case. Surge protectors work in a variety of ways, and some not as well as others. The second is to allow the case to act as a Faraday cage for the computer and offer some protection against random EMF - although, this is admittedly a small concern.Ģ. If you are touching the ground when you touch the case, you become the path to ground. If the computer develops a short for some reason, then the case could be become a potential. This has two effects - the first is safety. The computer case acts as a ground and is tied to the ground wire. Posted by FishBike at 10:05 AM on February 22, 2010ġ. I would be concerned about touching any metal parts of protected equipment which could become momentarily electrified when connected to this type of surge protector when a surge occurs, and the ground isn't really grounded. Not only do these NOT function without a ground connection, but I can't see what stops them from coupling dangerous voltages onto the ungrounded "ground" conductor in the event of that type of surge. What would worry me is the MOVs between line and ground, and between neutral and ground, to protect against common mode surges and surges on the neutral. It should still stop rapid spikes (which are blocked by inductors in series with the line and neutral conductors, no ground connection there) and surges between line and neutral (a MOV is connected between L and N with no ground there either). The surge protection function becomes less useful in the absence of a ground, though. You might get a "site wiring fault" indication, but the inverter still kicks in and supplies backup power when it should. Having looked at the innards of a few UPSes, and the schematics for a few more, and done the "yank the plug out of the socket" test with many more, they all seem to work fine, as UPSes, without a ground. ![]()
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