Map your two-prong outlets and grounding
One-time · any month works
Why it matters
Your house's era means some or all of its wiring predates modern grounding. That's not an emergency — millions of homes run fine this way — but it IS something to know precisely, outlet by outlet, because the fixes range from $30 to $15,000 and the sales pressure always points at the expensive end.
What skipping it costs
$150–$15,000
Ungrounded outlets fail you twice: no path to trip the breaker when a metal appliance faults (you become the path), and no protection for surge strips, which need ground to work at all. The audit is $10 and an afternoon; not knowing is how the sale-day inspection turns into a closing-table repair bill.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: $10 three-light plug-in outlet tester, Notepad or your phone.
- Buy the $10 three-light tester. It tells you wired-correct, open ground, reversed polarity, and a few other conditions via light patterns printed on it.
- Test every outlet in the house — yes, behind the furniture. Note three things per outlet: two-prong or three-prong, tester result, and room.
- What the results mean: three-prong + correct — done. Three-prong + open ground — someone swapped a modern outlet onto an ungrounded circuit; it looks safe and isn't (this is the one the audit exists to find). Two-prong — honest about what it is; ungrounded but not lying to you.
- Never "fix" a two-prong with a cheater adapter — the little tab does nothing without a grounded box behind it, which is exactly what's missing.
- Interim rule while you plan: keep computers, TVs, and anything with a metal chassis on the outlets that tested grounded-correct.
- Your map becomes the electrician's scope — which is how you buy repairs by the outlet instead of by the house.
Hire it out
$150–$300National fair range — local labor moves this number.
The code-sanctioned budget path: an electrician replaces ungrounded outlets with GFCI protection ($150–$300 covers a first visit and several locations; whole-circuit GFCI breakers cover rooms at once). GFCI-protected ungrounded outlets are legal, shock-safe, and get labeled "No Equipment Ground" — that sticker is the sign of a pro doing it right.
What GFCI can't give you is a true ground for surge protection — so the honest hybrid most older homes land on: GFCI protection broadly, plus one or two genuinely grounded circuits run to where the electronics live. That targeted approach costs hundreds. The "tear it all out" approach costs five figures and is only the right answer when the wiring itself — not just the grounding — has failed.
Ask the tech
- For my ungrounded outlets, are you proposing GFCI protection or actual grounding — and what does each cost per location?
- Will the GFCI-protected replacements get the 'No Equipment Ground' stickers the code requires?
- Which circuits genuinely justify running new grounded cable, given what I plug in there?
Red flags you're being upsold
- 'Open ground' test lights leveraged into a five-figure whole-house rewire on the spot. Code offers a legal, safe GFCI path for ungrounded circuits at a tenth the cost.
- Cheater plugs (3-to-2 adapters) suggested as a fix by anyone calling themselves a pro — they defeat the safety, not restore it.
- 'Your insurance will drop you' claims without anything in writing from your actual insurer.
Second opinion time: Any rewire quote over $5,000 — and always before agreeing that knob-and-tube must all come out; assessments differ wildly.
The call
DIY the map — it's a $10 tester and a walk. The fixes are electrician work, and the GFCI path is usually the honest one.