Electrical outlet without ground wire, hot and neutral wires terminated at ground screws

[Chara Boehm]

[b]Electrical outlet is without ground wire and the hot and neutral wires are terminated at the ground screws - in other words the hot wire goes to the correct brass screw and the end of it proceeds to the ground screw and terminates under it. Same with the neutral wire. Has anyone seen this before? I've read the early 2009 diaglogue on replacing outlets with 2 prong only (hard to find) or GFIC. Is the termination of the hot and neutral to the ground screws a way of "fooling the inspector"? This is in a bedroom, no microwaves, computers or water. Would the GFIC non-grounded installation be the best bet?

[Jon Holdman]

The description cannot be correct if the outlet is live. As you say, Mitch, it would be a short.

Now, it is possible the hot wire it connected correctly but the neutral is connected to both the silver screw and to the green ground screw. That will fool an "idiot cube" tester.

The connect way to fix that is to replace it with a non-grounded two blade receptacle. Otherwise, you need to add a ground wire. Most current codes now require arc-fault interrupters for bedroom outlets.