Won’t someone think of the ocean?!
Well, now, wait a minute. Seat belts and air bags, polio vaccine, helmets for bicyclists, 911, grounding pins, EMTs, disposable medical supplies, safety goggles, unleaded gasoline, unleaded paint, and a whole bunch of other new things have come along since we boomers were little. These things make us safer. Those of us who didn’t happen to perish because of the problems these fixed were still living less safely, just being fortunate while doing so. I think it’s great if we keep eliminating the more dangerous elements of typical life.
Great children books that have never been written: Why Can’t Mr. Knife and Mr. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
You get what you pay for. A 50 cent receptacle isn’t as well made as a $2 item.
HD and Lowes are absolutely making a killing on electrical parts.
A single gang, old work box is over $3 each. I know because I recently bought several for a project.
I’d estimate, Electricians buy a bulk pack of 50 for probably $50. (not from big box stores!)
Wire is even worse. HD stuck me $23 for a 25ft roll of 12/2 with ground. I should have at least bought a hundred ft at a better price.
I don’t even want to know what electricians pay for 500ft rolls. I’d guess less than 50 cents a foot.
Copper is ridiculously high these days, but there’s still a good discount at wholesale, bulk pricing.
Safe for work you say? My goodness, their male and female parts are clearly visible!
Now you confused me. The bulk pack of 50 cent receptacles your buddy bought in bulk are not as good as the $2 individual one yet the electrician’s 50 cents a foot wire is better than the $1 / foot stuff you can get? BTW Amazon for wire
This is not always true. As a handyman I shop at HD at least 4x a week. Through the years I’ve noticed some items (electrical ones in particular) are packaged differently but are exactly the same part - right down to manufacturers numbers and markings - that sell for dollars more.
Then why in the hell do you still shop there?
I remember when I discovered honey.
Shortly after, I discovered how to climb kitchen furniture. It’s all Mom’s fault, for putting the pot of golden sweetness on top of the high cupboards.
I have never heard the term ‘receptacle’ before. I thought everyone called them sockets, plugs, or outlets.
A 1000’ foot roll goes for a little under $300 at Home Depot, so you’re right to a point about bulk pricing. A lot of that goes to the cost of packaging.
But no one’s going to give you much of a discount if you need 20 -1000’ft rolls.
Copper price fluctuations can be killer on electricians - it’s been pretty steady lately but it used not to be.
In the mid -2000’s it was crazy and a lot of the electricians I worked with got killed on delivering jobs at the price they had bid, especially industrial projects requiring a lot of large gauge cable.
**Cheap Electrical Receptacles have hymens now? Awesome
**
…and we won’t stop until Cheap Electrical Plugs have foreskins!
Sorry but these kind of remarks drive me insane.
Naturally “Baby boomers, their children, and their grandchildren have managed to live in those homes safely”. By definition the survivors survived. Just like the people who say I never wore a helmet when I rode my bike and I lived. Yes, you did. But many didn’t because they died due to injury. The dead tend not to tell us of their experiences. Just because you lived through something doesn’t mean it was safe.
Kids do get electrocuted. Now maybe less will. And you say you don’t have kids. One day your house will go up for sale. Guess what will get dinged on the inspection?
Sorry for the rant but I find so many people do not want to acknowledge or accept the word or opinions of experts in a field (maybe the exception being doctors) nor follow their recommendations; as if their own narrower range of experiences makes them qualified to comment on matters outside they know little or nothing about.
Rant over.
What drives me insane are safety features that make a thing almost impossible to use. Those child-safe outlets don’t work correctly. The ones we had in our last house drove me insane–the amount of force required to insert an outlet frequently bent the tongs on the plugs. They’re a bad product.
It’s entirely possible that it’s just the brand (or lot) that you have. I’ve installed a dozen or so of them, upgrading to those any time I do electrical work. They’re certainly harder to use, but I’ve never had one require near enough force to bend the prongs.
Something to keep in mind is that a lot of them require both prongs to be pushed in at the same time. That means you need to make sure you’re pushing the plug perpendicular to the outlet or if you’d like, angling it just a little bit, so the neutral goes in first.
They’re designed so that you can’t put something in the hot side by it self.
Millions of people with arthritis are going to find tamper proof receptacles challenging.
I’m glad they aren’t in my mom’s home. Her hands have gotten so much worse in only a few years. She can still plug in bricks. I saw her plug in her blood pressure machine a few days ago. I plugged in her toaster. I knew it had a small plug and would be challenging for her to grab.
Outlets that get used often will probably get a little easier to use and spring stretches and the parts get a bit work out. Also, as we move forward, people won’t know any different. Having TR outlets in most areas of the house will be the norm. And, with that, there will absolutely be improvements along the way. Be it to the outlets themselves and how they work and/or to the NEC. It’ll just take a bit of getting used to, but it’s probably worth it considering the amount of kids that get shocked (2400/yr shocked severely enough that it gets reported plus around a dozen deaths per year).
But, in the mean time, this has been in the NEC for quite a while now so it’s probably not going away any time soon.