Merlin Zener wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 23:21:47 +0000, Taylor Miller wrote:


I moved to Mexico last November, and I finally got my gear down here. It
seems that most houses down here are not built with a ground plug for the
electrical outlets. I'm in a newly constructed house, and that's the case
here. I started looking around, and indeed, they had never even put in a
ground rod where the power comes into the house.
[...snip]


It's the same situation here in Thailand. Almost nothing [fans, lights
etc] has an earth, and anything that does have one has it chopped off.
They even sell power boards with three holes, but no metal in the earht
pin hole! I found I was getting shocks anytime I tried to use my mic
connected to my computer at home. Like you, the apartment building I'm in
is new - that's just the way things are done here.

I got a quote to put in a spike and run an earth wire up to my apartment
[3rd floor] - about 3000 baht; just over a month's rent...


Maybe you could fight fire with fire (so to speak), adopt that kind of
technology. Connect all your equipment frames together, look around for
other nearby exposed metal and figure out what to do with that (connect,
ignore, or cover). Maybe even a single point to a cold-water pipe.
You'd definitely have to know what you're doing and design carefully,
and stay in places where codes don't apply.

It could be as simple as just using real 3-prong outlet strips
throughout, up to where the 2-prong wiring stops; and running ground
wires or connecting unused channel inputs together.