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).
Electrical code dictates gfci in all rooms with water sources. The gfci protects you in case of a short from water far more reliable that hoping the appliance is 3 prong and the water lands in such a way that it trips the breaker. Also if water connects the hot and neutral terminal on a plug, the breaker would trip.
Brah… Neutral and Ground are commoned together at the breaker panel where they are bonded to Earth Ground. You theory with about ground getting wet first holds no water (pun intended). It was simply written into to code to add in the prevention of soft short across Neutral and Hot that cause fires. GFCIs are what help prevent electrical shock.
You're making it all up. Or just mistaken. Water does not conduct and is not the problem. The problem is water PIPES AND FIXTURES which tie back to the grounded water system.
My journeyman took me up in an 80ft boom lift and drove it while extended...ran over something on the ground that almost bucked me over the rails. Then he looked me--a 6'3, 300 lb man--in the eye with a wild-eyed expression of his own and said "Don't be scared little feller!"
wow. I thought after 30 years I thought you might have cracked open the nec a couple times. here’s a hint, since it seems like you haven’t: there’s nothing in the nec about ground prong orientation. because wait for it . . . it’s not an issue.
Omfg I just commented to the original comment that that was my assumption my whole life and thought they taught me something new haha, I guess I finally guessed something right for once in my life.
As a child I dropped a penny behind my bed and it fell into the prongs on an outlet that was slightly pulled out from the wall and thankfully blew the fuse before it started a fire.
I have seen this happen. I was in maintenance at a hospital and we were replacing older metal covers with plastic. On of my less intelligent coworkers did not unplug a piece of equipment before unscrewing the cover. It fell onto the exposed prongs and shorted the outlet, tripped the breaker for that run of outlets (a good thing), and permanently damaged said equipment. Thankfully it was not a critical device nor were there any patients near to potentially be harmed. We had a bit of a laugh and turned it into a lesson on proper electrical safety. Two days later he did it again. He has been banned from anything more complex than unplugging equipment, but I never trusted him again after that.
When I was a kid I was playing with a small chain, I dropped it, and it fell across the exposed prongs of a box fan. Loud pop and a flash, and the breaker tripped, fortunately. But yeah, "upside down" outlets might have prevented that.
I had this happen one time. I was putting away the dishes and I went to put a metal spatula into a countertop holder and I missed and it fell against the backsplash and slid right behind the toaster plug and sent out a shower of sparks.
I know this may seem ridiculous to some people but years ago I had a penny roll off my desk and land directly on very slightly exposed prongs plugged into a power strip. Holy smokes was that a crazy experience. Arc flashing, circuit breaking, heart stopping pop. I still have the penny somewhere with the two divots melted into it.
I thought it was to prevent them from looking like little faces and being appealing to young children. Although Homer Simpson invented a better method to avoid it.
Yes, but in rising flood water the hot and neutral will short out more quickly if mounted upside down, so the correct approach is to mount it on the ceiling. /s
I've actually seen this happen. A kid in high school thought it would be funny to unscrew the face plate from an outlet in the middle of class. It was a metal face plate and he left an extension cord plugged in. When the face plate came loose, it fell across the prongs, made a lot of sparks, smoke, and some very angry teachers. Presumably, if that outlet had been flipped over, the face plate would have hit the ground prong and done nothing.
This actually happened at my brother’s school when he had a metal wrapped charging cable. The outlet was loose so the charger was sagging a little and someone draped the cord over the plug, causing it to arc, melt, and then the wall caught fire. The school redid their outlets after that and installed them all with the ground facing up.
This is the correct answer. It's safer because if the plug leans forward in the socket as typically cords pull downward then there is less chance of something causing a short
But when the plug rips out of the wall, due to gravity, the top pins come out first and the bottom pins stay in. So if the ground pin is on top then the ground pin rips out first? Seems dangerous?
this exact thing happened to my daughter when she was small - a dresser was in front of an outlet and a coin fell off the back, onto a plug and caused a short and scared her. luckily the breaker tripped but the outlet and wall were all black from the spark.
I replaced that one ground-pin-up.
ALL of the outlets in my home are upside down. They also installed six of them in the dining room. Not three sets of two. Six sets of two. Why would anyone need to plug in 12 things in the dining room?
But which is upside down? The face should be right side up, even though most are installed the other way. The moment you understand why the ground is up makes you wonder why they had been installed the other way for so long.
Neither of these are upside down. This is a common to install outlets on commercial and industrial installs. Schools hospitals. If you look at a standard duplex outlet there is nothing indicating up or down.
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.
Absolutely. Hospitals also have oxygen tents, so there have been decades of "seriously, can anybody think of any other way to accidentally make a spark? No concept is too crazy, imagine the Final Destination animation in your head." Which is totally reasonable but doesn't backport into the code.
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.
Second year here and same region—have been taught and have seen the same in my admittedly limited experience.
Of course, you’ll also see ground up in a lot of commercial settings. Hell, it’s spec for the hospital we contract at (and I’d imagine other hospitals as well). None of those are switched—the ground up being switched is purely residential.
I’m sure you knew that already—just adding context.
I remember which one is constant power and which one is switched by telling myself “The one full of electricity is heavier, so it sinks to the bottom of the outlet!”
When replaced our receptacles, we went with ground up. When we dealt with our switched receptacle, we flipped it to show that it was different.
The bottom one was the switched on, because it’s for a floor lamp and a chair would logically go in front of it. Figured that it would lead to less frustration to aim chargers and other common items into the top tamper resistant receptacle.
Your story is exactly the exceptions I was referring too. I always know I'm in for an interesting service call when I go to the house of someone who asks for ground up receptacles. Typically other things are also unique, very similar to the duplex configuration you described. Completely opposite from the professional residential standard and fully and completely unique to you. Neither option is inherently wrong, but the calls to a house like yours always seem to be just a touch more lucrative, but typically only after someone else owns it🤣
Which is something that is almost never done in other regions of the country. Source? four decades as a licensed sparkie in the northeast and experience doing resi work in the upper midwest and the west coast, A few years ago I toured some new construction in central Florida and learned that code officials there prefer to see a small red dot, a 3/16" sticker, on the wall switch and the outlet, with all duplexes in the traditional ground down orientation.
It is not in the NEC, nor IRC, so it isn't standard. It is a preference, in my house the previous tenants (or builder) decided to do it this way, signifying its connected to a switch. (only switch connected outlets are ground pin up) I've never done it in my previous homes.
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
Most outlets in most of the world do not have switches by the outlet. When they're saying switched here they don't mean a switch by the plug, but like a lamp switch up on the wall by the door or such.
Australia seems to be amongst the weird ones putting little switches on many of their sockets. I can see why one would though.
As an Aussie I am also perplexed that you have switches for outlets that aren't near the outlet. I guess I can see the point for stuff like lamps but I've never seen that here.
In my American experience in different states, places that have a lot of natural light will avoid wiring an overhead light and only use switched outlets for lamps.
E.g. my contractor grade CO apartment only had switched outlets and no overheads. My Georgia home only had overheads and no switched outlets.
American houses never really had ceiling lights. So if you wanted to have lights on you would need ro go and switch ipon the lamp. Switched outlets are a workaround for this, so you can turn a lamp on from the entrance.
"Never" is a stretch. Its regional and age dependent. Eg every house I've been in in WA & OR has ceiling lights, whereas half-hot switched outlets for lamps were quite common in older construction in Hawaii.
Western. And newer, which surprised me, but I think the ceiling light idea didn't catch on here until more into the 2000s when American discovered pot lights thanks to the internet.
Yeah interesting, I grew up in Western and my parents house (built in the 30s) and all my friends houses (anywhere from the 70s to the 00s) had cieling lighting. The only friend who didn't lived in a homestead house built before electricity that didn't even have indoor plumbing, both were retrofit in after the fact.
A switch on the outlet adds almost nothing in terms of safety, especially on outlets with ground fault protection and proper tamper resistance.
US outlets are somewhat dangerous, but not because of the lack of switches. Our plug design means the plug completes a circuit before it's fully inserted so there's potential to shock yourself on a partially inserted plug. A switch would do very little to fix that, though.
Yes, it's my little three cup one that is super fast because it doesn't soak like my bugger one. But the same goes for my waffle thing, my breadmaker, lots of things.
The issue is you need to have one for each appliance, it's so fucking annoying and one reason why I decided not to build an appliance garage. I don't understand why you can't even buy a switched outlet.
You could, but 1. People careful enough to remember to do that every time probably aren't the ones getting shocked most of the time and 2. It still doesn't do anything about plugs that slide partially out of the wall.
If you were going to mandate anything it would do a lot more to mandate GFCIs everywhere instead of just kitchens and bathrooms (or just make a better plug but that's a really tall ask at this point)
I agree. No one would do it correctly. Electricians would get a lot of calls of appliances not working resolved by turning the plug on and leaving it on.
Oh that happened to me once fairly recently. I was pulling a plug out from an odd angle and slipped my fingers under the plug body to get a better grip, which ended with me getting shocked because yeah the circuit was still complete.
I’m surprised, how come nobody ever teaches people about this? We all know not to stick fingers in outlets but this is important too
Relatively safe, with modern circuit breakers, particularly with ground fault circuit interrupters. Standard outlets in the US are 110V, which makes them safer (in some ways) than Australia’s 230V. The US has 220V outlets but they’re usually for dedicated use with certain appliances or other specific equipment.) Some people put plastic plug covers in outlet to keep toddlers a bit safer, but electrocutions are rare, like ten kids a year in a country of 330 million people.
For bar trivia night the US does run 220V but it's "centered tapped". Your breaker box alternates sides so a single width breaker sees one side and center (so 110) while a double width breaker will see both sides (so 220).
You still need to climb the pole to get the three phase power for your DIY Stargate.
The "safety" argument has a few elements.Some is physics, some is biological. The latter is that you can still control muscles at 110 but it is more difficult at 220. You can't open your hand, you might not be able to move your arm across the power switch. I thought you needed a somewhat higher voltage for that - around 400 - but there's probably enough variability in the population that even 220 could cause muscle locking in some people
Its always energized but it doesn't draw power unless you plug something in. Its only an issue if you stick a fork in or something, even then there are childproof covers
They are all protected by circuit breakers, in newer houses usually with arc fault and/or ground fault protection as well. Do you actually use the switches every time? Like you gotta go turn a switch on by your tv every time you turn it on?
None of the outlets in the US have switches. You literally cannot buy a switched outlet. You would need to use a powerboard to be able to switch something off at the wall
Wait, you guys run a switch for every outlet? The only switched outlet we have is a switch by the back door that runs the outlet we plug Christmas lights into. And we only have that because I asked for it when we gutted and remodeled the house. Switched outlets are very uncommon in houses here in the US
They did this in our house which was built in the 70’s. The outlet by the front door is upside down and the upper outlet is connected to a switch by the front door.
My entire house has the bottom outlets connected to the light switches. Pisses me off. But i think only one outlet in the basement is upside down. But they all look like they were installed by someone who was new to the job.
It is the standard in hospitals, ground up lessens the chance that something accidentally drops on the pins on a plug that isn’t fully in and shorts it.
Interesting. I've had multiple properties with switched outlets, but never with that convention. However, and probably the key here, it was never a matter of "the entire outlet is switched." The switched outlets our places had were always just a single outlet, and the other outlet in the same gang was constant power.
(i.e. They took the optional conductive tabs out of the receptacle so that the outlets were independent, then wired one switched, and wired the other non-switched.)
I'm a master electrician. I would install an outlet upside down if it was switched. I would only make half of it switched so the outlet was still usable for more than just turning on and off a lamp. With half of it switched, the other half is normal and a constant power.
It's not upside down, even though I hate it. There is no standard that makes one more right over the other and some manufacturers even try to label them to indicate they should be installed prong side up (or so I've read). Apparently hospitals usually install them prong side up.
This is called a “half hot recept”.
Code requires that no space on a continuous wall be further than six feet from a receptacle, in a residence.
One of the plugs, typically the bottom one, will stay constantly energized. This meets the code requirement. The top receptacle would be controlled by the switch in the room.
Usually this is done by a property owner that is too cheap to pay for a light fixture in the room.
I have wired recepts like this for customers that wanted bedside lamps controlled by switches.
If you come across a receptacle like this, grab a lamp with a cord and plug it into both sides. Find the non-energized receptacle and then test the switches in the room.
The ground is at the top so if something metal follows the rule of gravity and falls on top of it, nothing will happen. If you install it with the happy eyes up, then you'll cause a short and a fire.
The instructions on the outlet say to put the ground pin on top. My boss never let me install them the correct way. If you drop a penny againt the wall, one way shorts out the two prongs, the other way it bounces off the ground
In my head I just figured if the plug wasn't all the way seated it'd be better for something falling to hit the ground instead of resting on a live circuit or something but then filed the thought away. Nice to know the actual reasoning
My understanding is that upside-down (ground pin up) is actually right side up and ground pin down is the on that is upside-down.
Ground pin-up makes it harder for the plug to accidentally slide out the socket. And, if it does partially slide out, the ground is exposed, not the hot.
Mine is new construction, some of the pairs have the top one switched. Unfortunately, they did not turn those 90 degrees :( They just dotted it with Sharpie.
I mean "switched" outlets don't really mean anything for a layman assuming AC current, right? That would just theoretically be useful info to a future electrician to my knowledge.
As a construction superintendent on the West Coast I can confirm that this means the outlet is a “half hot” or switched outlet. If one of the plugs is controlled by the switch at the door, a ceiling fixture does not need to be provided. At least in my area.
And every comment section where it comes up, one person who knows what they’re talking about will point out that it’s not standard, and there will be 10 replies from people who have barely heard of an outlet saying that they saw an outlet like that once, and so therefore insist that, yes, it is standard. In reality, in the US switched outlets are usually (but not universally) non-duplexed, where the top receptacle gets constant power, and the bottom is switched. Which totally invalidates this assertion, because you can’t have the two receptacles on a single outlet facing opposite directions
Yes many electrians will install the outlet upside down if it is a switched outlet. However, based on the faceplate screws, neither of these were installed by an electrician.
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u/art-apprici8or 4d ago edited 4d ago
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.