A friend of mine asked me today why the electrical outlets in my house were "upside down". They are positioned with the ground pin hole at the top and the two slots of the outlet on the bottom. I agree that, to me, they "look" like they are upside down, and I think they would "look" better with the ground pin hole on the bottom. But, my belief is that the National Electrical Code (NEC) is silent on this question and that there is no right or wrong orientation for electrical outlets.
My friend said that he has had code enforcement officials tell him that electrical outlets with the ground pin hole on top were "upside down" and that they needed to be reversed to be with the ground pin on the bottom to pass the electrical inspection.
Is there anything in the NEC that says that one way is "upside down" and the other way is the "correct" orientation?
This was discussed recently. Some inspectors want the pin up. The reason is that in an office a paper clip fell and hit the prongs of a plug that was not pushed in fully. Pin up would not let it short. IIRC, national code does not mention it.
Short answer, No. There is no rule about how they are mounted and there is even a school of thought that ground up is better. Something falling between the plug and the wall would hit the ground.
Typically when a receptacle is different than the rest, it is switched.
I think they look stupid when they are upside down (ground on top). I put them with ground on bottom because thats what I'm used to and what looks best. I dont make a habit of dropping paper clips on plugs, and actually if a metal object was to fall on a loose plug, it could contact the ground as well as the hot terminal too (with the ground on top).
Any inspector who wont pass someone's wiring because of the mounting direction of outlets is an idiot. I'd like to see that one taken in front of a board of electricians. It's not code, so it cant be enforced either way.
No, but some installations such as hospitals might dictate the ground up preference. Some equipment designed for hospitals and such might have cords with right-angle plugs on the end which expect the ground-up orientation. As someone else has mentioned, there may be locals codes to consider where NEC is agnostic on the matter.
You are probably right, your friend is probably wrong, and his enforcement official should be able to cite an official local code to remove the 'probably' from those statements. If he does cite a source, I would like to see it because no such source has ever been cited before as far as I know.
I've got a couple of appliance cords that expect the ground pin to be up. The freezer in my garage is like that, so I spun the receptacle around to match.
I replaced the cord on a really old, almost jet engine strength, floor fan many years ago. I don't recall where I got the cord from, but the plug is designed for ground pin up.
OT, but here's a plug-socket habit/pet peeve of mine:
When plugging a "permanent" item (lamp, clock radio, toaster oven, etc.) into a duplex receptacle, please use the bottom receptacle to keep the top receptacle open for temporary use.
I agree, but I suppose that's due to the way we recognize faces in humans and most animals. We are accustomed to seeing two eyes on top and a mouth below. So we tend to see faces even in inanimate objects. When the ground is placed on top, it just instinctively looks "wrong". At least that's my theory...
Does that cloud look like an electrical outlet? :)
Even if you had an outlet behind a desk and knocked a paper clip off the back, the odds of it landing in the area of the plug is unlikely. Then it would have to slide down the wall in such a way that it fits between the plug and the outlet. Sure, there's an EXTREMELY remote chance it could happen, but the bigger issue is the plug not being plugged in all the way. Either the outlet needs to be replaced, or the cord needs to be relocated so it isn't being pulled out.
Years ago I had some flat plug cords with a tab you could screw to the center outlet screw to secure it in place. That would solve the problem, but I can't say I've seen cords like that in recent years.
If someone was really worried about it, you could mount the outlet sideways with the ground and neutral facing up. Or better yet, put a stop on the back of the desk to prevent things from getting knocked off the back in the first place.
Or, you could install those locking outlets where you have to insert the plug and twist it to lock the plug in place.
We have outlets in our kitchen that are mounted sideways on a half height peninsula wall where there's not enough space to mount them vertically.
Perhaps, but it's not something I would argue about. If the local inspector wants them upside down, so be it. I just want to get my work approved with as little drama as possible. If it really bothers you, you can flip them over after the work is inspected. :)
As an aside, one of the purported reasons I read for the ground-up orientation was that children see a face and try to feed it a nice meal of paperclips. I'm not entirely convinced of that myself, but there it is. Two other reasons which made sense were that pictures mounted on walls with metal wires, and the metal escutcheons on the receptacles themselves are the perceived hazards.
Apparently none of those were compelling enough for NEC to jump on board.
You're partially correct. The ground pin is not known as a neutral pin. The flat blade that's currently made wider than the other flat blade is the neutral. While both of them are grounded, the neutral is intended to carry current, and the ground only carries current in the event of a fault. It is safer to have the ground on top for the reason you mentioned, but I know of nothing in the NEC that dictates which way you mount them, unless it's a recent change.
This was one of my main complaints with electrical inspectors, back when I had to deal with them. Sometimes they make shit up and claim it's a code violation, when it isn't. We had an old saying: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, inspect".
Yeah, I looked it up to see what the correct terminology was just after hitting send. I saw that the description used the words 'insulator' and 'standoff' so I figured no harm, no foul.
That's something I do. Sometimes, I've even changed it in public places.
Unlike a lot of people, my idea of "looks best" depends on practical things, not silly rules. If you plug something into the top outlet (of a vertically mounted) duplex receptacle, the cord hangs down across the bottom outlet making it harder to use.
I'm not sure if I EVER thought it looked best to use the top.
Thanks all for the replies. Looks like the answer is that there is no national code (in the U.S.A.) that requires outlets to be oriented in any special direction.
One thing that I also noticed in recent years is that there does not seem to be any one standard way that the 3 prongs on 3-prong plugs are oriented -- including the flush mount type plugs that allow the wire to be parallel to the wall with the plug plugged in. With those types of plugs, I would like to be able to orient the outlet so that the plug wire can come up from the floor or down from the appliance (such as a window A/C) and plug in correctly. I am probably not describing or explaining this too well.
And, I sometimes thought it would be interesting if all outlets were designed so that there would be not "up" or "down" position. For example, if all duplex outlets had the ground pin of each outlet on each end and the other two prongs in the center, then there would be no "up" or "down" orientation -- the outlet would look the same regardless of which way it was installed. But, there would be problems with that idea because that would result it the hot side screw of one outlet being on the same side as the neutral side screw of the other outlet in the duplex.
When I was about 5 years old, there was no ground pin on the outlets. (Neutral was the wide slot, Hot the narrow slot.)
Milk was delivered to the house. A quart milk bottle had a paper cover held on by a wire.
I knew that there was "electricity" in the outlet, and wire was an electric conductor. One morning after the milkman came, I decided to try an experiment. Fortunately I only burned my fingers.
Unfortunately I did not learn my lesson completely. I've been shocked numerous times since then. Recently I came to appreciate GFCI outlets!
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