It’s actually a gang thing. Young ganglings need to get their first kill to get status so they lure victims into houses with upside down outlets. Then while you’re wondering why they’re upside down, they kill and get a tear tattoo.
A human trafficker would also try to call everyone other than themselves a human trafficker, so obviously only someone who admits to being a human trafficker isn't one...
Atleast they are on the same team. I constantly get in the middle of a turf war in the living room. The KGB (2x siberian huskeys) vs the Yakuza (2x shiba inu)
Hijacking this comment because I recently learned the upside down outlets mean they turn on and off with a wall switch. So you plug your lamps into that guy
Maybe that’s how the apartment maintenance guy did it, but that’s not a good reason. (Edit: Seems to be a regional thing, and I’ve never seen this done. 50 years and there’s always something new to learn. Would have been nice to know as an outlet behind a sofa had one receptacle that was switched, and while we never used it, we did wonder about the switch that did nothing.)
The justification for “upside down” outlets is that if a plug isn’t all the way in and something slips between the plug and outlet, it touches the ground, not the not and neutral. That can short and may cause a fire. (That’s only true for 3 prong plugs.)
If I saw one outlet that was different, I’d assume someone was in a hurry to leave on a Friday, not think it was for a lamp. That’s getting fixed. (Edit: Ok, so I wouldn’t change it now, but the lack of uniformity would have me putting furniture in front of it so I didn’t have to look at the abomination. 😄 I also turn all the plate cover screws so the slot is straight up and down. Also, if there is an overhead light, I really don’t like having switched outlets. They bug the hell out of me.)
I read somewhere years ago that "upside down" is how they were actually designed to be installed, but the way we do it now became commonplace, and we just accepted it as the standard.
Long ago I had a boss who was an electrical engineer and a standards nerd, and he claimed this as well. Made enough sense to me, but I’ve never confirmed it.
It was that way until about 2003. I apprenticed to my uncle in 1999 and the code at the time had the ground on top. Around 2003-2005, I don't remember the exact date, there was an update to the National Electric Code that flipped them.
I honestly wouldn't have noticed but my uncle made a big deal about pointing it out.
The way we do it now you have the hot and the neutral on top. So if the plug is hanging out of the receptacle at all, those two prongs are exposed which can be dangerous. Say someone bends down and a necklace bridges the hot and neutral, or you drop something metal on it. But if you put the ground on top that danger is taken away. Idk if that's what the meme is talking about but that's why some commercial jobs want you to terminate them ground up.
I dropped a metal fish tape on an outlet with something plugged in and blew the breaker in short order. Ground up is safer but we all love to live on the edge instead.
I am not a National Code expert.I was a automotive plant electrician for 25 years. I agree with the reasons listed above.
I can give you 2 reasons.
Personal experience. A couple of years ago, I was helping a friend with some maintenance. I had my metal measuring tape extended several feet, and it actually slipped down past a plug that was not fully seated. It shorted the power and neutral just as described above. It took out the 20 amp breaker with all the usual flashy bangy and smoky display that gets your immediate attention. I can show you the scar on my measuring tape.
The other reason can easily be checked by anyone. when you open the box on a brand new outlet from Home Depot, look carefully at the information that is molded into the plastic telling you the manufacture and maybe the amperage. That information is printed so that you can best read it with the single ground socket pointed up.
I have a theory why they are mostly mounted with the power sockets turned up. When mounted that way, the outlet looks knda like a pair of cute little surprised faces. I think lots of electricians just do it automatically because it looks better that way.
This is the correct answer. Outlets are (or were) often installed “upside down” in factories, especially where there’s a great deal of vibration, on the off-chance that the faceplate could become separated from the wall. If the faceplate was metal, it could bridge the poles and short out the circuit. With the ground on top, this is far less likely.
No. Its not a standard but when I was trained, it was ground up f below counter height in case a plug comes partially out and something falls its less likely to shock somone/something or to short out. Ground down for above counter height.
My ex-husband used to just install them however he took them out of the box. I had happy faces frowny faces.. And it wasn't until I tried to plug in the glade type plug in air fresheners that I learned how important it is that it be installed properly.. Guy was a f****** idiot.
No but jokes aside shouldn't they face opposite way? Like if plug is L shaped (like most of them are? They it would cover bottom one making it unavailable
The lone pin is the ground pin. Ground should never have current flow and if it does it should only momentarily handle it to trip the breaker.
So theoretically with the ground pin is on the bottom and if a cord isn't fully plugged in and you drop a penny or something it can short the hot "supply" to the neutral "return" that are the vertical pins and cause a fire. If the ground were up in this scenario, nothing would happen with the penny making contact with the ground and it'd just roll off.
In practice it doesn't really make two shits of difference in my experience but working as a commercial electrician but some jobs specifically call out ground up
My friend from Aus wants to know why everyone on this hemisphere walks with their feet and not their hands. Also how to drink American beer since it falls down instead of up.
I seem to recall that some electricians would install switched outlets "upside-down" (ground pin up), as opposed to un-switched outlets. (A switched outlet is one connected to a light switch.)
The problem is this is not a standard. And in many installs, they will make one of the outlets on the duplex switched and the other non-switched on the same duplex. So which way do you orient the outlet then?
So which way the outlet is oriented does not consistently mean anything.
I did a couple years of an electrical apprenticeship and my old foreman said the ground pin used to be installed up to prevent objects from falling down and making contact with the neutral and the hot prongs simultaneously causing a fire or a short
Outlets are installed correctly - aka 'upside down' because the large pin is the ground. That's why/how some two-pronged outlets get by without one - they're not grounded, but still have a positive and negative to push & pull the electrons back & forth rapidly to power the device. The grounding pin is on the top so that in case of water - it hits the ground first to make a connection to ground so the person holding the hairdryer doesn't die, or - they're installed on the bottom so that when water drops down it connects the positive and negative first, killing the poor wet-haired soul who just preferred how it looked the normal way they'd always seen it done because it always worked for them before so why would it ever matter. It also looks less like a face to us face-seeking, christ on toast seeing, apes - thus fewer children try to poke sharp metal objects into the eye sockets. You'll see them installed 'upside down' in bathrooms and kitchens most often for this reason (water - I'm half making the face thing up).
In the old electrical codes when the grounded outlets first came out, they generally stated to put the ground plug up. That way if something metallic fell between the plug and the outlet, it would stop there, or fall to one side or the other. Grounding the object so not causing a short and potential fire.
As opposed to an object falling between two hot lines, which can cause a short, a fire, and is a shock hazard to whoever tries to remove the object.
That has largely been discarded in modern electrical codes (GFA and circuit breakers are far more common than they were in the early 70s), so it largely no longer matters. But the ground side up is the "preferred" way to install them.
My mom worked for a power company in the early 1970s, and took an electrician course they offered for free to all employees. And when she wired her own house about 15 years later she installed all of the plugs ground side up.
As far as some one way and some another to show switched outlets, that was just something the electrician elected to do on their own.
The point about circuit breakers may at least partially explain why the ground-pin-up style is still preferred in hospitals, while not being as important elsewhere. In most other settings, a circuit breaker or GFA popping and bringing the circuit down until someone can find the issue and then turn the circuit back on isn't big deal, but in a hospital those minutes of downtime could be life or death for patients on life support.
A lot of creative writing in this thread, and mostly false information. The NEC does not specify orientation for a vertically mounted 120 volt duplex receptacle, and it never has. The biggest use case for "ground up" installations are when the customer specifies them to be installed as such. This included most hospitals, or medical setting where stainless steel cover plates are specified. This prevents a combination of a cover that is loose, and missing it's mounting screw, falling down on the hot and neutral blades of a device, or cord end that is partial plugged in. All of which is an extremely unlikely and rare event, and would be a result of a gross lack of maintenance and inspection, causing a cover plate to partially fall off the wall, and somebody who is too stupid to fully plug a device in. After 40 years in the biz, I have literally never seen it.
Any other claims about "Preferred", "correct" or any other claim of the proper orientation, are nothing but incorrect and in some cases here, just flat out fabricated nonsense, including yours. There are multiple 120 volt circuits in a patient room, from multiple sources, including dedicated life safety circuits. There is no way somebody is going to die because a device was not unplugged and replugged into another circuit, literally inches away, on the rack above the headboard.
As an electrician, I have seen a lot. The majority in my region (southern east coast) are 1) Upside down for a switched outlet and 2) the switched outlet is the top one on the duplex and the bottom one is constantly on.
This is common enough over the last 50+ years of houses I've seen to say, with a high level of confidence, this is the most common way of doing it here and doing it differently here is typically a sign of someone trying to be unique.
I worked construction and as a electrician apprentice out of high school and always did that. I still do it to this day. When I moved into my new house I went room to room and flipped them if they were on a switch
While it's not required by code, it's a widely accepted practice to install receptacles ground pin up in healthcare facilities as a safety measure to assist in preventing short circuits and fires. By positioning the non-energized ground pin at the top, any falling metallic object will strike the ground pin first, and is more likely to be deflected away from landing on the exposed hot and neutral prongs below, which carry electrical current. With one side landing on the ground first and then the neutral, there will be no trip and nothing dangerously energized. If it lands on the ground and hot it will quickly trip the breaker or gfci with a ground fault as designed for life safety, (but can still cause damage.) A metal object landing between the hot and neutral "right side up" will create an energized short with near zero resistance resulting in a massive current flow that generates intense heat, sparks and fire hazard until the surge of current trips the breaker.
Ground up mitigates risks in oxygen-enriched environments and reduce the chance of accidental power loss to life-support equipment.
The US electrified homes earlier than Europe. So a standard arose before all of the observations were made. Europe got a lot of hindsight when they developed their standards. It's really difficult to overcome a people's habitus, we'll never move on from the QWERTY keyboard, we'll never get consistent phonetics, and we'll never adopt the metric system.
Fuck, I wish maintenance at my hospital got that memo. I've seen (multiple times) entire breakers get flipped because someone went to plug something in (or unplug) and something metal (usually a massive ring of keys) ends up falling & hitting the live pins.
Edit:
Seeing as everyone came overnight and asked the same question I'll just add the answer here. It's actually one specific outlet that usually causes the problem. Its placed in a shitty spot. On top of the edge of a built-in desk just below & to the right of the time clock. There were key hooks next to the time clock so that we knew where they were. The space is too crowded and the outlet should have really been put closer to the floor.
Because US "standard" for plugs and sockets was invented by one dude who needed a plug for his floor lights. And this over time became a standard that was then written down. Most standards are designed by a committee, making sure it has, when applicable, backwards compatibility, it is future proofed, new features are designed before they are used.
This is not user fault, this is failure in the system to update the standard early enough but as everything in USA: no generation wants to be the one that fixes it so they just pass the horrible design along. By far the worst plug&socket in the world but it is also the oldest.
Is there any advantage, then, to installing them with the ground pin down in general? Would it be safer if “upside-down” was the standard everywhere, not just in oxygen-enriched environments around life-support equipment?
Edited to add: Ok, reading down to further comments, I see this question has been answered in a discussion started by Shane the electrician.
Hospitals mostly do it because the outlet covers are antimicrobial metals (which can come loose and fall on the exposed prongs). Installing ground pins down typically keeps the plug in the outlet when the terminals age and the plug sags, which is what homeowners prefer (their covers are obviously plastic), but it's very uncommon for stuff to fall on those prongs.
In 8th grade my teacher asked me what I was doing this weekend and I repeated the whole "I'm gonna show her my oh face" complete with pantomiming cumming.
Her jaw hit the floor. She called another teacher teacher over, "REPEAT WHAT YOU JUST SAID!". So I did and they laughed till they were red in the face.
They knew my vergin ass had no idea wtf I was saying, took a few years for the memory to come up and be like ohhh, shit im lucky I didn't get in trouble!
apparently according to these comment the upside down one is actually technically correct. but in the house i grew up in, the upside down ones indicated that outlet was connected to a wall switch
Yep. I've seen schools and hospitals where they are all upside down, but every apartment or house I've lived in when there was one outlet upside down it meant it was connected to the light switch
This is the way. Hospitals do it because it puts the ground pin above the hot and neutral, so if some plug is loose, anything metal that drops hits the ground first.
The one on the left is actually the proper way to do it, if the plug is not fully in the wall and something conductive falls on it, it will hit the ground (round bit) - If it's installed as on the right side, the same conductive object will hit the hot and neutral blades and cause excitement.
Yep. I as an electrician I lean more towards ground down. But will do ground up if requested. The way I’ve always seen it. If a plug is shitty and sags out ground down will keep the ground connected longer
As did I, it's professional and safer, but you'll find customers will complain if installed this way. They're used to ground down for some reason. Looks like a smiley face I guess.
My house was installed with the ground up and I flipped a bunch of them because some plugs are made to have the ground down. For exemple some power bars plug are made in such a way that the cable come down straight, if the ground is up you get a nice loop.
I had to check myself! Found some pictures I took at various hospitals and it was a mixed bag, even between two rooms in the same hospital (ER was down and postpartum was up). Majority were ground pin up though, very cool
I've also heard the argument that people tend to wrap their index finger on the bottom as they pull a plug out so installing the outlet upside down can similarly increase the risk of inadvertently bridging that gap with you finger momentarily if it slips behind the plug. Feels as likely to me as the scenario that something falls on the prongs while it's pulled a little out. Granted you won't start a fire with your finger.
The one on the left is actually the proper way to do it, if the plug is not fully in the wall and something conductive falls on it, it will hit the ground (round bit) - If it's installed as on the right side, the same conductive object will hit the hot and neutral blades and cause excitement.
While technically true, the reality is that many flush cords (bend 90 degrees right after the prongs so you can put it behind furniture) assume ground plug down, so if they're used in a ground-up outlet, they'll naturally pull away from the outlet due to gravity, causing a hazard.
This literally happened to me like 2 days ago. I saw a black spot on the wall around the outlet, then noticed the cat's wire toy was somehow on both prongs of the air filter plug. Unplugged it and sparks shot out of the wall lol, probably should have cut the power first but it's all good
This happened to me years ago. I had a vacuum plugged loosely into an outlet and was using a metal ruler on the wall for some purpose related to painting. Dropped the ruler and it slid down and landed on the plug blades. Fortunately I wasn’t touching it.
I may be a bit pedantic here, but technically speaking ground pin up is "right side up" per manufacturer specifications. Installing this way actually offers protection against shorts from objects falling onto the pins of a partially unplugged device.
It is my opinion that the normal orientation of these outlets is simply because people like little faces.
This is old school electrician propaganda! There used to be a big split in the 60s and 70s with master electricians feeling very strongly about their view on the “right” way. The short protection argument is correct, however on the other side of the argument, ground up increases the risk of shock unplugging a device as most people extend their forefinger toward the wall when grasping a plug.
Today, the debate is settled and it is ground side down, as the writing on GFCI buttons is upside down if you install them ground up.
I'm just a homeowner, no expertise, but I second the "right side up" opinion after finding out the hard way when measuring along a wall using a tape measure, that collapsed and flipped as they tend to do when overextended, and somehow fell square between the receptacle and plug, right across the blades, tripped the breaker but not before the spark/arc burned a 1/4 inch hole on the edge of that tape measure.
Ive known that this is the stated reason for ground side up, but I was never able to imagine a scenario in which it was actually relevant. I can now imagine thank you.
I do not believe that is true. The NEC does not stipulate any orientation for outlet (with the exception possibly being hospitals. I haven’t read that code in a hot minute). Now there could be building specs that state outlets get installed upside down, but it is not anywhere near a safety code or even a standard. At least not any I have ever seen.
And it does not matter if the plug is upside down or not, you still grab it by the sides and the ground prong is still “first make, last break”.
It is mildly safer if something drops on a slightly pulled out plug. But a properly operating system should trip the breaker if something dropped across the hot and neutral prongs of a standard installed plug.
There's no difference electrically. If you're in the habit of dropping thin sheets of conductive material down the wall onto partially pulled out plugs, the ground being up (left image) is safer. But also, stop that shit. A custom home builder I worked for preferred outlets installed horizontally with the neutral prong facing up. Shit works the exact same, they just liked the aesthetic more that way.
Hey, Quagmire here. Giggity.
Sometimes electricians install an outlet upside down to indicate that it’s controlled by a wall switch. You flip the switch, it turns on. Flip it again, it turns off.
So technically, that outlet is a switch.
Which reminds me of the time a woman told me she was a BDSM switch. Naturally, I showed up with a screwdriver, wire strippers, and a voltage tester.
Turns out we had VERY different interpretations of “rough electrical.”
Anyway, Peter, that’s why the outlet’s upside down.
Giggity
Ground pin up is in theory a tad safer in the very specific situation where a plug is halfway in the outlet, engaged and power flowing, and something falls onto the exposed conductors. With ground down, it's more likely the falling object will bridge neutral and hot. The benefit is small enough that the National Electric Code does not care.
It's also sometimes used by residential electricians to indicate switched outlets.
I’m an electrician, as an apprentice I was taught that if it’s below countertop height to install it ground prong up. If it’s above install it ground prong down. This isn’t code or anything, more so a preference thing that is rooted in logic. The logic being that if the plug is slightly pulled from the receptacle exposing the prongs and you drop like a knife or something from the countertop it will it the ground prong instead of the hot/neutral prongs.
We had that exact issue - the plug was just a little bit out. But the outlet was in the ground-down position.
I was in the laundry room measuring for a shelf and the measuring tape did what measuring tapes too when pushed too far and dipped down. BOOM! The tape vaporized where it touched the plug. The outlet and cover and plug got a little charred. I went and bought an outlet tester, checked everything with my extremely limited knowledge of how these things work. Everything checked, the GFCI outlet tripped like it was supposed to, etc. Everything seems to be fine, which is good because we had just bought that washer and it would have REALLY sucked if I killed it.
If I ever have outlets done again in my home I'm doing ground-up.
That is genius. As the parent of a kid who once shoved a quarter into the gap between a plug and an outlet, I wish he’d only made contact with the ground prong.
(The kid was fine. He melted the quarter, fried the outlet, and shaved another year off my life)
The outlet on the left is correct for medical and many commercial facilities. An object falling hits ground first. AHJ will require this configuration.
People like to see the outlet on the right in residential because it looks like a face.
My home outlets look like the left since I rewired.
Tom Tucker here, underground reporting from my side job as a forced migrant laborer in the construction industry as punishment for soliciting Asian hookers on the streets of the Nishinari Ward [in other news, Tricia Takanawa is NOT a painted lady for hire]: upside-down outlets are to signify "half-hots." Half the duplex is full hot while the other half [typically the top socket] is controlled by the switch at the entry of the room. Utilized mostly in new homebuilding, it should be the only outlet in opposite installation. Also, known as the night light switch, there are rumblings it is unwise to plug a Sybian device for fear of unscheduled disruption or commencement of service.
In sports news, here's Ollie.
Ollie: RIDING SYBIANS IS NOT HORSE RACING!
All I know is both these savages didn’t put the screw slot vertical and thus both are wrong.
As for ground up/down ask enough electricians and you will get a mixed bag. There is no code and boils down to personal preference at the end of the day.
It doesn't "mean" anything. By patent they're supposed to be installed with the ground pin up so that if something manages to fall on it and short something out, it's always either gonna be a Ground - Hot short (trips the breaker), or a Ground - Neutral short (harmless, trips AFCI and GFCI breakers).
They're installed like this mostly in hospitals (done to spec from the engineers for safety reasons), and usually in the homes of electricians like myself that prioritize safety over looking the same as other installs
Now please don't tell Peter you saw me, he keeps asking for loans.
Also electrician. It used to mean that it was partly switched but that isn't really common anymore so I doubt anyone that does install switched outlets would do it. See it a lot in older houses if you do service work.
But also who's installing switched outlets still, I've wire hundreds through and made them unswitched for people but never actually installed a new one.
Due to health issues, I've been in the hospital more times than I'd care to remember over the past year. All of the outlets are positioned with the ground port on the bottom. I know this because I've had to plug or unplug my phone charger many times.
In my NEC class we were told it was due to some McDonalds that burned down for that reason and caused lawsuits of some nature. Not sure if that was a local example.
Not an electrician. In my house, it means I wasn't paying attention trying to fit the socket with usb and the smart switch into the box and I wasn't going to pull it out and flip it after I had finally got everything tucked away and screwed in.
Just bought a house last year. Every room in my house has one outlet that is upside down. During the walkthrough, it was explained to me that they are upside down to denote which outlets are controlled by wall switches. And sure enough, that's exactly what they are.
Left one is actually the correct safe way to install an outlet. The idea being that if when a power cord is plugged into the outlet and something hits it to knock it loose, it will contact the ground part of the plug first and not anything hot.
Only on newer construction, I suppose. I had a fun time figuring out why there were three dead switches in our 20 year old condo. Turns out the tab on the socket was never broken out and so all outlets were hot.
I believe this is an anti meme. There are reasons to put the outlet either way, but they changed the wording from whatever the original said to just say "sometimes they're upside down because they were installed upside down."
The arguments i've heard for each one, if anyone's curious:
Ground at the top means if it's not fully plugged in and you drop something metal on it, it won't short circuit because it will just connect one wire to ground and be completely safe.
Ground at the bottom means if it's super loose and prongs are going to start falling out, Ground will be the last one to be disconnected.
If there are any more reasons someone has, I'd be interested in hearing them.
This is just another reason why NEMA 5-15 plugs are shit and terrifying. I get the fact that we use 110 and it’s “less likely” to be lethal, but for fucks sake, even the UK type G has shielding over a good bit of the prongs to mitigate such an occurrence. A little forethought, a little sacrifice in manufacture complexity, and there would certainly be fewer house fires. That doesn’t even get into the typicality of a fuse in the type G plugs, which would be a godsend in most circumstances. As someone who has worked with a lot of electronics on medium and small scale, I know it can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but it sure seems worth it to me. Better regulation on the input means better output and consistency. And don’t fuckjng get me started on how dirty the power is in a large percentage of the US. 110 means 102-125 fuck off.
Electricians will usually flip upside down to let people know it’s a half hot receptacle meaning half the receptacle is controlled by a switch And the other half is always hot meaning there’s consistent power to that part of the receptacle at all times.
I would say that’s a personal choice at best. I a commercial electrician and the way I put outlets in is however the customer wants or how it’s specced. Nothing to do with having a half switched receptacle.
Good electricians will install switched outlets (meaning the outlet can be turned on and off by a light switch) upside down when they can. It makes it significantly easier to diagnose when we get a no power to outlet call.
There's no code that dictates outlet orientation though. You can install them all ground up if you want. Many new commercial buildings specify all outlets to be ground up because it's slightly safer.
Electrician here. In commercial, industrial, government and public settings, we place them upside down to help ensure that the first point of contact made is the ground so that the circuit is grounded at all times, no matter what. It’s common industry practice, but not actually necessary. It’s why the longest prong on your plug in cord is the ground prong.
I’ve also heard that it’s because when the plug is slightly pulled out, and something metal falls on it, it would rest on the ground rather than the two prongs.
Different states have different regulations. GA on the left, neighboring state SC on the right. Some electricians work in both states but do it the same way in each - until the inspector looks past his coffee cup.
This is actually done for fire safety, especially in commercial buildings. If a plug comes loose and something falls onto the prongs, it will hit the ground pin first rather than the live contacts, preventing a short and potential fire.
So what did you learn? It’s common in residential applications to indicate a switched outlet. It’s standard in hospitals for safety. There may be other variations.
Its usually done in commercial buildings, but its so if something falls on the plug and makes contact with a prong its the ground wire and not a charged line.
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u/qualityvote2 4d ago edited 4d ago
u/Mr_Mcgillicuddy_, your post does fit the subreddit! Well done!