This has bugged me since my oldest niece started crawling 10 years ago. Yes, they have those plastic outlet caps, but they’re a pain in the neck and not everyone uses them. Wouldn’t it be simpler and safer to just put the outlets out of kids’ reach, say 4 feet off the floor? By the time they’re big enough to reach that far, they should be old enough to know better than to stick their fingers in the outlet.
If I’m not mistaken, many public buildings (schools, libraries, etc.) have their outlets at this height. Why not private homes? Is there any good reason besides aesthetics and tradition to have the outlets near the floor? The National Electrical Code is generally more concerned about safety than aesthetics. So is there any movement to change the NEC along these lines?
bibliophage, I think there are safety reasons for placing outlets near the floor. I would think that you would want to limit the amount of cord dangling in the air before it hits the floor. Cord suspended in air is a tripping hazard, and if the cord is connected to something like, say, a 100-pound television, could result in a serious injury.
That said, I think the actual reason for the standard placement of outlets is to limit the amount of wiring required to power the outlet. It is common in most places for electrical wiring to run up into the walls from a crawlspace or basement, so the closer to the floor the outlets are, the less wiring has to be run. Even on a second floor, the wiring will commonly be brought up to the level of the second floor and then run around to the outlets, rather than up into the attic and down.
Dang. Two construction-type threads in two days. I guess all these years of watching This Old House and Hometime are really paying off.
do you really want to see cords hanging from your walls? I know I don’t. If you place the electrical, phone, tv etc connections down low, the cables are mostly out of sight.
Of course there are places like the bathroom or kitchen where they are more convenient higher up but this is not true in most of the rest of the house.
Actually I was thinking that metal conduits mounted on the outside of the wall would be used to carry the wiring (raceway or Wiremold, I think they’re called), also at about 4 feet. This is the way it’s done in many public buildings. That would avoid the problem of wasting a lot of wiring between the floor and the outlet. I don’t see any reason the conduit couldn’t be hidden behind a wooden chair rail or something similar, though it is rarely hidden in public buildings.
I wasn’t thinking of moving my outlets. The question pertains to newly built houses in general. I have no plans to buy or build a new house or to change the wiring in my current one. I was just wondering.
At the risk of (a) making more of this than I think you really want me to and (b) grossly over-generalizing, I will reply that such methods of distributing wiring are almost without exception examples of post-construction, who-the-hell-thought-they-would’ve-wanted-an-outlet-there retrofitting. And, I would be willing to bet that many of the public buildings you refer to are of cinder-block construction, notoriously difficult to run wiring through after the fact.
AFAIK, construction codes invariably prefer wiring to be run inside a wall where it cannot easily be damaged.
Not at all an answer to your question, but just in case you wanted to make life easier for your sibling…
The little plastic caps you put on the empty outlets are indeed better than nothing, but there are better alternatives. (The plastic caps are not terribly difficult to remove, and a plug is easily pulled out, leaving the outlet exposed.) The one I like best is a replacement outlet cover that has a disc covering the outlet holes (with a second set of holes in it) that, without a plug in it, turns partway so as to cover the holes. To insert a plug on must put the plug in just partway and then twist the disc to line up the second set of holes. It is too difficult for almost any toddler to operate. These replacement covers are readily available and easy to install.
There is also the problem of youngsters grabbing the cord. The bigger the loop the easier it would be to grab and we all know if it is there they will grab it.Bonk —lamp or whatever broken or embedded in JRs head.
Over here with our special housing for the elderly does have the outlets a couple of feet up the wall.
Our plugs are large anyway but additionaly can have a loop moulded as part of the plug body sticking out the back, again for use by the elderly.
There are contractors who specialize in building “accessible” housing, one feature of which is higher placement of outlets on the wall. In that case, though, the express purpose is making it possible for persons in wheelchairs to reach the outlets.
Hmmm… when I was a kid, we didn’t have those wimpy outlet covers; we just stuck forks in the outlets, got shocked bad, & learned not to mess with electricity.
Oh, and we didn’t have those wimpy “school zones” where cars had to slow down. We looked both ways & then ran across the street before our little asses got mowed down by an 18-wheeler.
And we didn’t walk around with our underwear showing, either.
In many countries with 220 voltage, they do put them high up. I once lived in a flat with no plugs at all except in the kitchen over the counter, and one behind the master bedrom bed. Every room had built-in ceiling fixtures and sconces. The maid had a long extension cord to hoover.
When I did a garage conversion specifically for a home based day care, the best move I made was putting the plugs up five feet. The TV and VCR were mounted on the wall so the cords weren’t a problem. The second best move? Half sized toilets, like they have in kindergarten classrooms sometimes. No toddlers falling into the bowl!!