Yeah I was reading about grounding my outlets and it doesn't sound like a trivial job at all, even for an electrician. It is even worse if you have plaster walls, which of course I do (early 60's house).
I did buy a voltmeter. Supposedly I can use it to figure out if my outlets' housings are grounded. I haven't yet leaned how to do that. I think it is only if the plenum cables have a flexible steel conduit around them. I don't think mone do.
Do you own this house? The only thing I can say is you don't want to get into fucking around with electrical work...especially with plaster walls....even more especially with a house from the 60's. Shit was wired completely differently 50 years ago, and if there has been any upgrades since expect to find a confusing cluster fuck of a mess.
Do you actually have stock three-prong grounded outlets throughout the house? Depending on where you live, it's possible that code requirements called for grounding to be installed during a renovation or upgrade sometime in the history of the house. If
every single one of your outlets is three pronged, chances are code requirements called for grounding throughout the house. If you have even one 2-prong, chances are that someone has just been changing the actual outlets (code violation pretty much everywhere). Electrical work is fucked though, so it's best never to assume anything.
Testing for Ground:
Without a voltage tester, it's simply a case of cutting the power through the breaker, unscrewing the cover plate on an outlet, and pulling the box from the wall to see how the actual outlet is wired. You should have a black wire running in and a white wire running in. If you're grounded you should also have a bare copper or a green wire running in. If you have that, you
should be grounded. Should be. With a house from the 60's though, god knows if the wires are actually colour coded, and god knows if that (possibly existing) ground wire to the box is actually hooked up. It's a good thing you have a meter.
I'd double check, but you should be putting one prong into the hot slot, one prong into the neutral (with power going to the outlet, of course). Once you get a voltage reading, you're going to want to keep the prong in the hot slot, pull the one out from the neutral and put it in the ground slot. If you still get a voltage reading, you're grounded.
Find out you're not grounded and don't want to pay to get a professional in there? Don't fuck around, just buy a bunch of CFI (with the "Reset" and "Test" buttons) outlets and install those. Not as good as being grounded, but they should prevent you from getting shocked. But, do the next person in the house a favour...mark each outlet as ungrounded...or make it well known somehow.
Also, keep in mind that shit like surge protectors don't work at all in ungrounded sockets.
