Thanks, 6 cats. Excellent advice, and I "recommend" (lil LECTURE FOLLOWS) everyone here not mess with wiring. Plumbing is powerless to kill you. (So to speak). (Excluding coronary.) I have completely rebuilt or originated the wiring from pole to puter in several houses, to code; mostly restorations that included working with older systems, and I pretty much know what I'm doing, but I can tell you most amateurs don't. Most homeowners don't. Seen it time and time again. MOST don't even understand the function and importance of the equipment grounding; GFCI's maybe a little.
I shut everything off at the panel/box and test every wire with a (tested) indicator, regardless of whether it's sposed to have current in it or not, because of the pervasive bozo universe. I assume that wires from circuits are mixed in bizarre, inventive ways, that a person doing the job correctly would never conceive. Don't take the cover off your panel and go poking around in there. It spits back, hard. Picture a screwdriver blown through your forehead. As some in the trade say, "It bites". (General advice, not neccessarily you, 6 cats.)
And yes, one "little" 15-20 amp switch or recptacle has 1-20 times what can kill you, depending on the conditions. You know "arc welders", those things that melt super-hot metal together, they work on electricity. All they are is a "short". And outside is the WORST. Bathroom and outside, which is why GFCI's were invented. (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptors). Seems once a year here somebody eats it holding a droplight to clean their rain gutters. (People in Orgeon clean their gutters in the dark because that's all we have here.) Taht mother needs grounded, and even then, ground is a question of quantity and pathway. ...which is why GFCI's were invented. (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptors). (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptors.) They make sure the equipment, or appliance, or tool "ground" ("purportedly" the green or un-insulated copper wire) is doing it's job, otherwise you will do the job for it. ("Geez - I'm standing on a wet aluminum ladder in wet leaves on wet dirt, and if that doesn't get me I'll just grab this soggy, water-filled metal raingutter.")
You see, although at the time you don't, that a little tiny piece of wire or electrified metal has just barely touched something inside the tool or appliance there that it shouldn't, something maybe connected to the outside, and the electricity just sits there waiting to kill you. Waiting to leap out. (If you could see it, it would be bright red or blue all around the outside of the thing, but you can't see it, because you're blind as a bat, so you just go ahead and grab it. Dontcha.) It's waiting, patiently, sometimes for years, to find "a ground". To be driven, hard, from big power plant to pole through that wire thru your heart through your feet (or arms or head). Your body will do just fine, as a connector to anything providing escape for it. It SEEKS it, dissipation in ground, frantically, like microbrews or orgasm. It's pent-up and inconsiderate. (People forget that this is why wires have insulation on them in the first place.) A ground is anything with enough mass and conductivity to electrons, or whatever electricity is made of, to allow force to move rapidly, back and forth or any which way, and the power bleeds out into it. Fast. Instantly. Zoink. Wham.
No electricity will move anywhere without a ground. Your whole house has one, usually a metal rod jammed eight feet into the dirt outside the panel.(Actually, as I sorta understand it, the power flows out, and then gets sucked back, like beach waves, about sixty times a second, which is why it is "alternating current". But it still needs access to that bigger reservoir of electrons to play with, which is the "ground".)
Now, if there was a third wire in that tool, or toaster, connected to the case, when the firewire touched the case it would have leapt through the third wire back to the panel, and the breaker there would have recognized that leak and shut it off. You can choose to make sure outlets are grounded, and tools too, or you are just offering to do it yourself. Personally. Simple as that; no BS. It's that third prong, literally the most important one. You can also buy "Double Insulated" tools, highly recommended. (Especially for "husbands"; generally, a class of people containing the biggest idiots in the world.) (There might be some new tech effecting this stuff, too; I don't really know what I'm talking about. Suckers.)
It takes a fair amount of juice to trip the breaker back at the panel; as they discovered, a lot more than can kill you ded. So the GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor) measures (thank heavens), judiciously and politely, much smaller amounts of leak, in areas where they're most likely to take a short pathway ~ kitchen and bath (because of all the plumbing, metal, and water ~ making "ground"), soggy grass ~ and shuts off the circuit power. It is not a pain, it is literally telling you that there IS a tool out there waiting to kill your ass. A big, toothy snake.
(It'll give ya zzzzzzzzits.)
So go ahead and call those guys or get a friend to do it. (Someone you don't like.)
I AM NOT AN ELECTRICIAN. I am electrons and photons in your machine.
(Any bodies are welcome to correct for glaring embarrassmental inaccuracies.) And yes, I know we have a bunch of scientists on this thread, and they know more than me, and are probably going to piss me off, (altho I really enjoy learning stuff I don't know), but that's what we're paying them for. And who works on their house?
Somebody like me.
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