Can Ground wire be attached to metal switch box?


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Old 11-08-17, 11:59 AM
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Can Ground wire be attached to metal switch box?

Hi, I live in a house with old wiring, it has a fabric woven string like covering on the wires and no ground wire in the switch box. I have just removed The rotary dimmer switch that was not working well and it had only two wires on it both black (I'm not sure what happened to the green ground wire? Maybe the person who installed it cut it off?)
I have a new rotary dimmer switch to install and it does have a green ground wire and the two black, but now I'm not sure where to attach the ground wire.
I have heard of simply screwing the switch ground wire to the metal box as a sort of "ground" but is this really what I should do? Or should I cut off the ground like the last person did? Or something else?
 
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Old 11-08-17, 12:21 PM
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If your wiring is not grounded you cannot accomplish anything by attaching a ground to a floating box.

Leave the ground tucked into the box.
 
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Old 11-08-17, 01:50 PM
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Thanks pcboss for the reply, it didn't seem like connecting to the box would do much, but I figured I'd check.
Gotta love living in an old house
I installed the new switch and its working great! No more fiddling with the old loose rotary switch to get it to stay on.
 
 

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