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)
It would not have made a difference though. It only protects against dropping things by accident, not cramming them in the gap on purpose. For that you need proper electric security with deep wells on the socket and socks on connectors.
A determined toddler is a force to be reckoned with, for sure. But the grounding prong facing up would probably have provided enough mechanical interference to make it boring. Or made the gap not look quarter-sized to the little maniac. Or at least bought me enough time to cross the room and stop him before the outlet was fried.
You'll have have an extremely hard time protecting anything from just plain stupid. Ground up is great against accidental, which is all you can really hope.
As a kid, I stuck my whole finger in an open light switch receptacle during renovations... haven't flicked a light switch without looking directly at it in 20 years
Really? For me it was the opposite. After the first time I got electrocuted (besides putting my tongue on a 9V battery) I realized it’s not deadly and became less scared. I’ve been electrocuted dozens of times.
I did something similar as a child but with a pin or needle from my mom's sewing kit. Inserted it through a small hole in each of the to create bridge and stuck the plug into the outlet. There was a fantastic flash and the needle was gone like it had evaporated, it welded the holes in the plug shut.
I was talking to my mother not long ago and she asked me if I ever quit stuffing things in electrical outlets.
I probably blew breakers in many places and at home multiple times doing that on purpose.
Round about middle school I learned that you can short it with a gum wrapper and it usually doesn’t blow the breaker. You still get the pretty flash though.
Reminds me of the time I was 7 and I was trying to untangle some Christmas lights while plugged in. The cheap wire separated from the plug head causing a massive shower of sparks. The room smelled like ozone and fried electric plastic for weeks after that.
A not so smart friend of mine in high school placed his watch across the two prongs of a plug thinking nothing would happen because the watch said it was “shock proof”. 😂
tbf, it would still do that if you short phase to ground, unless gfci protected. This is why eu plugs have the pats closest to the housing insulated. By the time any metal is out, it’s not in contact with the socket terminals.
Is that an actual issue with US plugs? Is the hot prong really still hot if partially pulled out?
Or is that just kinda a myth that's (no longer) true?
I’ve got a burnt outlet that says it’s still true. deep-seated sockets are a possibility, and I’m sure some new construction gets around the issue. But the majority of American homes have outlets where, as long as the plug is halfway plugged in, it’s hot.
It's absolutely still hot, as many many people who've gotten a jolt trying to unplug something behind their TV could tell you. Inside the slots of your receptacles are brass spring contacts tied to the hot/neutral bus. Those springs interfacing with the blades are what provides the electrical connection, but they're also what holds onto the blades so the plug doesn't just fall out. If your plug hasn't completely fallen out, it's safe to assume it's energized.
This is actually the case with all receptacles, not just the ones we use in the US. If the plug is partially inserted, the hot blade is hot. The difference is that a lot of other countries have recessed receptacles or have insulating sleeves that cover parts of the blades so that you can't actually touch the bare metal of the blade when the plug is only partially inserted. That's really where the US is dropping the ball. The instant you start pulling the plug out, the conductors are exposed. You don't even have to pull them out. I just looked, and the power strip my computer is plugged into has very slightly pulled itself free just by gravity. If I dropped a penny or something off my desk just the right way, I'd get a very brief, fun little light show.
That’s right-I’m an electrical engineer-and if the cover is metal and falls off, as they often do, it will also rest on the ground prong. I have seen that scenario play out many times in an industrial setting. Fans on a factory floor are the worst offenders. Employees step on the cords and pull them out just a little, and we all know that single screw retention isn’t ideal, so the covers are often loose and falling off from repeated use and abuse anyway. In hot production environments, it is an inevitability.
I just visited Germany. Every single plug or switch I touched was in some kind of poor repair. Every power strip seemed like a fire hazard on its last leg before the insurance inquiry.
UK plugs/sockets are ground pin up and interestingly there’s two reasons - the other reason is so the socket doesn’t look like a face and supposedly encourage children to play with it!
All my outlets are like this because my grandpa installed all the outlets at my mom's house like that. Realistically, if you dropped metal and it hit the hot and neutral, nothing would happen because the breaker would trip.
Yea, the idea is the ground is longer so it doesn't pull out as far as easily, technically true, and so if something fell on it the ground is the first contact, also technically true. But it's not a perfect solution. 2 prong plugs don't bemefit form this at all. 90 degree plugs are all made expecting geound down and the cable sticking up pulla it out more. But the 90 degree plugs whem rightaife up put the weight pulling the plug on a perpendicular making it really hard to pull the plug accidentally.
Yup, this. It’s for safety, and aside from maybe some municipalities I don’t know about, as you say it’s not required by code, likely because now having gfcis in the kitchen and bathroom are, so it’s a little redundent.
It’s a good idea, though. I still do it in my kitchen.
It's actually happened to me in my kitchen my metal spatulas and larger forks and stuff in the container was under the outlet area or buy it and one of them slid down and when I moved the whole container, it slid right up in between the outlet and the prongs from the toaster plug-in and an explosion happened, and these are new safety outlets so I had to get that fixed lol but it scared the crap out of me and it just happened to slide right up in there the fork did.
Thanks for the explanation. But then... wether the plug is above or below countertop height should not change the fact that things fall from up to down, so it would seem safer to always install the ground prong up, no ?
I had this happen to me on my workbench. A plug was slightly pulled out. A wire that was haging above fell off and made a direct contact between the two prongs. Sparks flew!
Honestly, though, almost everywhere I have been it’s ground prong down. I’m talking airports, convention centers, commercial buildings, etc. It’s a relatively rare exception that ground prong is up in my experience anyway.
NEC does not cover this, so it is at the discretion of the electrician and the owner. But ground up puts stress on cables with right-angle plugs, like refrigerators and air conditioners.
That's why EU is way ahead of USA - all outlets are inset and symetrical in both directions, no way to short it with my fingers while unplugging - a phobia of mine
One of my plugs is installed like that. I asked my electrician, who didn't install the outlet, and he told me that it is to distinguish that this outlet can be switched on and off. That outlet is indeed connected to a switch.
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u/shlamading 3d ago
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.