I sure hope you’d turn off the electricity feeding that outlet first. I know it’s possible to flip the outlet without touching the wires, but I sure wouldn’t want to do it.
I have done it, depending on the outlet and the wires in the box. I have also opened up the box, stopped what I was doing to determine the correct circuit breaker. It is a judgment call and I practice some dumb unsafe habits.
Jim
In that respect, european sockets are the best: http://www.interpower.com/icl/images/88010610spec.jpg
Modern British ones with plastic covering the base of the prongs also remove this issue, because if the prongs are far enough out for metal to be exposed, the circuit is broken. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:G_plug.png
48V? 12V? Wimps. I used to work around electric resistance welders that used 5V. At 20,000 amps. 
I replace live outlets all the time. My wife hates that I do it. It’s not going to light up my eyeballs or anything, and I’ve accidentally gotten a little buzz of a shock a couple times. But even replacing them live is pretty simple; flipping them is no biggie.
Of course, if the electrical inspector is standing behind me, I’ll probably turn off the breaker for his sake.
At an election night party last night, I asked an official of the State Electricians union about this. He had an interesting explanation.
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There is NOT any requirement in the Code about this. Some states or towns might have added this, but it would be unusual. He didn’t know of any such addition anywhere in Minnesota.
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But in the training & apprenticeship program run by their union, they DO encourage the ground-up, neutral-up-if-sideways as a SUGGESTED ‘good practice’. And many electricians, from experience, tend to treat these ‘good practices’ just as if they were legal requirements. Might even forget the distinction, and confuse them with Code requirements, he said. (He also said one of the reasons for suggesting this is to make sure all the outlets are installed the same way throughout the house – homeowners get annoyed if they are installed differently in different rooms.)
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So I asked him why inspectors would require this, if isn’t in the Code. He replied with several comments:
- Inspectors confuse ‘good practices’ with requirements just like electricians do. (And nobody fights them about this, since it’s simple to change.)
- The best electricians are busy wiring houses; mediocre ones have time to become inspectors.
- Inspectors can be jerks; many of them are. Some of them like to exercise their authority by always finding at least one thing needing change. (His language was a bit stronger on this.)
He said just because an inspector says it’s Code requirements doesn’t mean it’s so. But starting a fight with an inspector over a minor point like this will lead to them finding lots more ‘violations’ on the next job.
Thank you, so much for the information. This matches to what I have been told as I have definitely never seen such a code in writing. Sounds like a good explanation of the discrepancy.
Jim
The answer lies in NEC 90.4
The short read is that if the AHJ will only give you a final sticker with ground up, then so be it. You won’t get a U&O without it. I’ve had AHJs mandate stuff that IMO was nuts, but they hold the cards.
My 2¢ worth.
I first noticed the “upside-down” plug phenomena 3 or 4 years ago in the commercial buildings trade. My comment at the time was “What idiot electrician installed all of the plugs upside-down?” An electrician on that job, and definitely not an idiot, explained it to me. According to him, the practice started in hospitals where there are a whole lot of metal objects - trays, instruments, etc. - that could slide down the wall and come in contact with the exposed hot and neutral if the plug was installed in the standard orientation. As pointed out earlier, the main result is a flash-burned receptacle and a tripped breaker. Only in a hospital setting, that breaker might be powering a respirator or other life-critical device. So in a hospital setting, it is required to install the plug with the ground facing up to prevent this fairly rare occurence. The practice is slowly expanding out to other industries. Probably because of the “good practices” reasons outlined by t-bonham.
What a great thread. Thanks all for the enlightenment!
FWIW, when we painted the inside a few months back I bought all new “gold” switchplates and outlet covers. There’s a bunch of different metals (meaning finishes) available for this purpose still.
And they look purty!
You can install your sockets ground-side up, but then you have a problem-most appliance cords are designed with ground side down. this makes for akward plug-ins, if you want to have two appliances plugged in. Speaking of electrical codes, we have a very old house-its been rewired, but a few ceiling fixtures still use the old armored "BX’ style cable-is this safe to mix with romex 3-wire systems?
The only problem I note with “BX” style cable (referred to as type AC in the NEC) is improper ground termination-failure to wrap the wire back around the armor, wrong style entrance connector, not securely fastened. Grounding and bonding of the device or fixture box is dependent on all of that being observed at every connection/box along the branch circuit, so the quality of a ground can easily deteriorate. There is no prohibition on extending/adding with “Romex” (type NM) in a residential application other than exceeding the capacity of a device box-many older boxes were small, and using all of the knockouts may go above the limit regarding maximum number of conductors.
In California, or at least in San Bernardino County, the final electrical inspection doesn’t even cover how the outlets and switches are installed, except for GFI outlets. You leave the boxes open with the leads hanging out so the inspector can see them, again excepting GFI outlets. GFI outlets are required for kitchen, exterior, and garage outlets. Don’t ask me why garages are included.
After the inspection you install the switches and outlets and call the utility to hook you up.
All,
The 2011 NEC IS available online… in a public forum, it is supposed to be read-only, but if you visit archive.org and search for 2011 NEC you will find a PDF there to download.
Enjoy!
Also, I have heard the same thing concerning ground up on receptacles. A broom (or similar object) can slide down the wall along with a metal object, the broom can loosen the plug and the metal object can touch the live contacts and start a fire.
Another thing to note from the NEC is that outlets below 5 1/2 feet in height must be replaced with tamper resistant receptacles now… I personally hate them.
Cheers.
I think it is to do with the shutters in the socket, and how the mechanism works. I don’t have a spare socket kicking about or I would experiment.
Do they have a 2006 zombie edition?
Realize that this a zombie thread but this made me think of this little bit of outlet graffiti.
http://www.obviouswinner.com/storage/post-images/electrical-outlet-sex.jpg (Mildly NSFW)
I first saw it on George Takei’s twitter.
zombie or no
That baby-proofing crook wanted to sell us safety covers for the electrical outlets. But I’ll just draw bunny faces on them to scare Maggie away.
I haven’t read the whole thread (being a zombie), but one of the first posts talks about GFCIs tripping if you make contact with the GROUND (as an argument for having outlets upside-down), which I call BS on, because no current is going to flow unless the outlet is seriously miswired. Indeed, many appliances with metal cases have the case connected to ground for safety reasons.