New bathroom ceiling light is not grounded?

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  • I just installed a new ceiling light in my bathroom but could not find anything to screw the ground wire to. Is this dangerous? What are the consequences?


  • Dear Groundless,
    As you know the positive and neutral make the light work. The ground is the exact same thing as the neutral but without a second insulative coating. The ground is to prevent electrical shock in the case of a short between the positive and the metal parts of the fixture. A safety precaution is all that it is. Often the ground is attached to the outside of the work box. There should be a grounding screw through the box if it is metal. Grounding it there is fine. If not then attempt to keep small children from standing in water while turning it on at the light.


  • The light will work without the ground hooked up.

    Many ceiling light fixtures end up not grounded. Sometimes there is no ground wire, other times the electrician never bothered to hook it up in the first place.

    Since the light is on the ceiling and presumably not reachable without standing on anything, it should be OK as long as the switch is grounded.


  • That bathroom light may be on the same electrical box circuit as the other plugins in the bathroom. Test your electrical box breakers to see. Install a GFCI plug in ($15) to each plugin in the bathroom for additional safety. The theory is if you stand in water and touch the plugin leads that the GFCI circuit will click the power to the bathroom off and noone dies and fire hazards are greatly reduced. Or if you go to do electrical work on the light in the future and touch the wrong live wire, the GFCI pluin will trip and save your life, as long as the gfci plugin is on the same breaker from the breaker box.


  • "Antacid" is leading you astray. Do not attempt to install a GFCI receptacle unless you fully understand your bathroom's wiring. In the first place, per the U.S. code (varies somewhat in different states), any receptacle within 3 to 6 feet of a water source must already be on a GFCI, which very likely is in another part of the house. Secondly, one GFCI is all you need for all of the receptacles on a single circuit, which may include everything in your bathroom, including the lights. You just have to know where to put it (there is only one correct location) and how to wire it properly. It's not a task for a well-meaning but inexperienced amateur.







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