That’s right, the electrical outlet we all know and put up with here in North America
is usually installed upside-down.
Some of you might be making a face very similar to these right now,
but the fact is this common orientation is starting to get some pushback.
Take a look at the packaging of new receptacles in the store.
They nearly all show the outlet with the ground connection on top of live and neutral.
The markings on the receptacles themselves also imply that this should be the top.
In fact for a while now there has been something of a… pressure campaign, I guess you would say,
to retcon what’s normal and make you question reality.
This manufacturer has clearly obliged - they even take care to package them with the ground connection at the top.
The practice of treating the ground pin as the top of the receptacle supposedly began in hospitals.
Why?
Well, the common “face” orientation we typically find
is actually somewhat dangerous thanks to the many design flaws of the NEMA receptacle and plug.
Inverting the outlet certainly doesn’t fix those flaws, but it does reduce the risk of some possible calamities.
So you will sometimes hear that this is technically incorrect,
and that installing the outlet with the ground pins up is the proper way to do it.
There’s just one small problem, here:
nobody cares!
I don’t care.
Most electricians don’t seem to care.
And I honestly think you don’t need to or in fact should care.
That’s right, this is a debunk.
While there is some truth to the idea that the ground-down orientation is not ideal,
and don’t worry I’ll show you why,
there are many confounding issues here which make advocating for its inverse,
to put it mildly, pedantic and/or paranoid.
At least, in my opinion.
If you suddenly woke up and found someone had turned all your outlets around in the middle of the night,
it would be irrelevant the vast majority of the time,
maybe very slightly safer in a few extremely specific scenarios,
and the rest of the time it would be supremely irritating and, in fact, introduce some new risks of its own.
The first order of business we have on the agenda today is rules.
Because there actually aren’t any about this.
Peruse the National Electric Code all you want and you won’t find a specific rule for how this receptacle type should be oriented.
There are plenty of rules regarding spacing along walls and what kind of outlet can be used in what circumstances
but as far as how you wanna install this guy in the wall?
Totally up to you.
It’s so up to you that here in Chicagoland we like to install them sideways.
Nearly every home I’ve ever been in around here has ‘em installed just like this.
And you’re right, the hot blade is on top!
I’m not entirely sure why this is common here
but it probably has something to do with the fact that all electrical work has to be done in conduit until you get pretty far away from the city,
so we don't get to just nail plastic wall boxes to studs and run Romex around the place like the rest of you can
and for some reason this orientation sticks around like deep dish pizza.
Anyway, that’s not important.
What is important is that there isn’t a definite right or wrong here.
And, on a gut level, you probably already knew that.
Just look at the test and reset buttons on a GFCI outlet.
These words aren’t printed both ways just for grins and giggles, the manufacturer knows it could be installed either —
or indeed neither — way.
And in case that’s not convincing, take a look at this fancy thing I found.
This duplex receptacle features both orientations!
Good luck picking just one.
So.
What’s the deal with the whole discourse, then?
Why do some folks insist that we should turn this…
frown upside-down?
Well, there are two main reasons.
Both of which ultimately stem from the fact that the design of this plug and its receptacle is bad.
The blades aren’t sleeved with any insulating material, and when the plug is partially inserted
it becomes live despite the conductive blades remaining ever-so-touchable.
Especially when you have small fingers like a child does.
It’s not great.
But! If the outlet were simply rotated 180 degrees,
the risk of accidentally touching the live blade as you insert or remove the plug becomes muchly mitigated!
See, now the ground pin is on top, so it’s a lot harder to get your thumb in there.
Except… well, two things.
One, when I hold onto a plug I’ve usually got my index finger curled around the bottom.
So if I were plugging something into an outlet like this,
my thumb might be a bit safer but I could still get zapped down below.
But perhaps more importantly —
not all plugs even have a ground pin, do they?
For this plug it doesn’t make a lick of difference where the ground pin is
because it’s not there!
So I don’t really buy reducing shock risk from simply handling the plug as a reason to invert the receptacle.
It’s not the most commonly cited reason to avoid the “face” orientation,
and in fact I’m having a hard time tracking down a solid source of that case being made but I swear I’ve run across it before
and besides it’s a good lead-in to this side note:
Side-note, there is a weird difference between three-prong plugs and two-prong plugs that I hadn’t really given any thought about until it was pointed out to me.
If you ever come across something with a very old power cord,
you’ll find that our plugs used to be much worse and outright terrifying.
Look at the plug on this old tape recorder.
There’s hardly any clearance between the metal blades and the plastic body, and there isn’t much of a grip to grab hold of, either.
And I’ve actually seen some even worse than this.
Over the years we made the two-prong plug at least a little bit safer
by flaring the plastic body out towards the end and adding this lip for even more clearance.
But… grounded plugs largely haven’t gotten that particular memo for some reason.
This power supply cord has its plug blades barely any further from the edge than the 50 year old tape recorder.
And… that’s all kinds of weird!
It has gotten a little better - this power strip's plug has a bit more meat around the blades.
But it's still not quite as much as a standard two-pronger.
I suppose maybe this makes them fit better into power strips
(or maybe some other application would be messed up if the plug shape were modified to be closer to the two-pronged plug).
Whatever the reason, it means that, ironically,
cords meant to introduce an element of safety by way of grounding the appliance they’re connected to
often make the process of plugging and unplugging that appliance just a little bit spicier.
However, holding the plug wrong and getting a nice little shock from it isn’t the only problem we face.
There’s also the issue of partially-inserted plugs and foreign objects.
Again, this plug is bad, and even if nobody’s had a shocking time of it and it’s inserted perfectly well,
it can nevertheless become slightly dislodged.
This plug is still reaching far enough in to make contact with the live conductors in the receptacle,
but look at all that room we have for things to sneak in there.
Things like keys,
or coins,
or scissors,
or knives.
[metal clanging] Do you have any idea how many games of
“throw the knives at the wall” have been ruined thanks to these terrible plugs?
It’s at least one.
If a flat metal object manages to slip into this little crack,
it can bridge those pins and poof!
[poof]
You’ve tripped a circuit breaker and made a nasty char mark on the wall.
Or possibly, if things go terribly wrong,
started a fire.
Of course, outside of Boston, most people don’t play “throw the knives at the wall.”
But that doesn’t mean there’s no risk for the rest of us!
Remember when I said this plug design is bad?
Yeah, me too, but also -
the wall plate design is bad.
There are a few variations but the most basic wall plate for a duplex receptacle
is held on with a single screw which attaches right here.
Wall plates are usually plastic these days, but they haven’t always been.
Metal wall plates used to be quite common, and they’re still used from time to time today.
If the single screw holding it on backs out with time or in some other way fails,
the wall plate could fall onto the live and neutral pin of a partially dislodged plug and short it out.
Again, not good.
But the risk of a short circuit isn’t the only problem.
Imagine you’re working on some sort of home improvement project and you whip out one of these bad boys.
Now imagine you’re taking a measurement of the length of a wall,
and you’ve got a boombox or something plugged into an outlet on that wall you’re measuring.
You bumped the cord a little while back and didn’t see that the plug became dislodged,
and as you cast your tape to the wind -
a tape that is metal, mind you.
And droopy - it slips in that crack and lands on the live pin.
Ouch.
Or, let’s say you’ve decided to lean like, I dunno,
a file or a square or a yardstick or something up against the wall next to an outlet.
If it, too, suffers from partial dislodgement syndrome,
that yardstick could fall onto the live pin and become live itself.
Say a prayer for the person who reaches to pick it up next.
If only the receptacle had been rotated 180 degrees!
Then the ground pin would be at the top and even a loose plug would be less likely to start a fire or hurt someone
in these extremely specific scenarios I’ve just described.
Actually, when the ground pin is up top,
the plug is less likely to become dislodged in the first place!
The ground pin is longer and reaches deeper into the receptacle
in order to ensure it’s the first to make contact upon plug insertion and the last to break contact on removal.
That makes it something of a pivot point.
If it’s on the bottom, then a downward force on the plug will easily pull the shorter live and neutral pins out somewhat.
But if it’s on the top, it takes more force to get it to budge.
Plus, once it does budge, the other two pins are jammed right up against the receptacle face.
Thus they remain mostly untouchable.
Seems like we have a pretty solid reason to install these ground-up, right?
I’d probably never trip a breaker when playing "throw the knives at the wall,"
a falling metal wall plate would simply land on the ground pin so no harm no foul.
And measuring walls with a tape measure and even leaning long flat metal objects against them become safer activities, too!
What’s not to like?
Well, you probably know what I’m gonna say next.
Not all plugs have a ground prong, Harold.
This One Weird Trick will do absolutely nothing for ANY of these scenarios we’ve gone through
if the loose plug in question was one of these fellas.
And that’s a lot of plugs!
The majority in my life have only two prongs and I doubt I’m alone.
“Aha!” you say
“but why would you be against reducing the risk in the circumstances in which it could be reduced?
What exactly is the problem with a ground-up outlet?”
I’ll tell you what the problem is:
They don’t make very good hamburgers.
But also, it’s the mere existence of these:
right-angle plugs.
Maybe it’s a plug-in timer,
maybe it’s the GFCI thing on a hair drier,
maybe it’s a smart plug,
maybe it's the venerable Kill-A-Watt,
or a nice power strip,
or an appliance cord,
I have yet to encounter one of these which doesn’t assume the ground pin will be below live and neutral
(or, if it’s a polarized but ungrounded cord, that the wider neutral blade will be on the left).
Unless it’s fancy enough to have one of those swiveling plugs,
the cord would point straight up when inserted into an outlet with the supposedly superior orientation.
This reason alone is enough to get me to say
“nahhh”
to the idea of flipping the outlet around.
There are just far too many products out there which would become absolutely horrid to use.
And not just from aesthetics, but from function as well!
Cable management is a lot harder when the cord just wants to flail about - and then this becomes a tripping hazard!
Unless and until devices start getting shipped with right angle plugs that support the ground-up receptacle orientation,
attempting to paint this as “correct” is, to me anyway, utter nonsense.
Luckily for us and our sideways outlets,
right-angle plugs work no matter what!
Here’s how my computer’s power strip is plugged into the outlet under my desk.
It’s a bit cheeky but it’s doin’ the trick.
But wait!
There’s more!
Right-angle plugs greatly reduce the risk of a cord getting dislodged in the first place.
Our plugs only get droopy like this for two reasons:
A) the receptacle is badly worn out and it’s not gripping the prongs well
so over time gravity pulls down on the cord and it pivots away from the wall and/or
2) they get bumped.
A right-angle plug solves both of those problems by
1) being more difficult to bump into and
B) the weight of its cord pulls straight down
and thus it naturally hangs from this position without relying much at all on the friction between the blades of the plug and the receptacle itself.
It takes quite a strong downward yank on the cord just to get it to start backing out.
Yet when the same cord is plugged into an inverted outlet,
it’s trying to come out all on its own thanks to all its weight pulling it away from the wall.
So if you ask me, right-angle plugs which assume the ground pin will be at the bottom
are not only a reason to just ignore the whole upside-down outlet argument,
but right-angle plugs themselves are also a pretty good solution to the problems inverting the outlet attempts to solve!
Assuming, that is, they don’t completely oppose the orientation of the receptacle.
Honestly, it’s awfully strange how most of our power cords
just stick straight out from the wall a bit, isn’t it?
Seems like we’re just asking for trouble most of the time.
Oh, and right-angle plugs don’t even need to be grounded -
here’s an ungrounded extension cord with a right-angle plug.
It stays flush with the wall so is less likely to get bumped, and the weight of its cord won’t try to pull it out.
And yeah, the manufacturer put the cord at a 45 degree angle
so that no matter what orientation your receptacles happen to be, the cord is at least marginally well-organized.
Plus it avoids issues with two of them being used with the same receptacle.
If there’s something you should be advocating for,
I would say it would be making the right-angle plugs the default.
But maybe not this particular design.
Or indeed several others.
The main downside of right-angle plugs is that they are harder to use,
especially to unplug.
And, the slimmest among them make brushing against the prongs even more likely since you kind of have to dig your nails into the sides for a good grip.
It’s actually quite strange how much of a Wild West plug design is over here.
These two variants are certainly the most common these days,
but when it comes to right-angle plugs, anything goes apparently.
He’s a replacement lamp cord plug and its wires go out the side!
So, again, if there’s something we oughta work on,
I’d say it’s getting the plug ducks in a row first.
It might also be worth looking into sleeving the blades like many other countries do.
Whether that can be done without breaking compatibility with the installed base of receptacles is the real question,
and I hope somebody’s looking into it.
In the meantime, don’t get too hung up on the upside down or right-side up issue.
As we see around Chicago, it's not even a binary.
As ever, use caution when plugging and unplugging things from the wall.
And now that you’re aware of this issue (if you weren't already),
hopefully you’ll look out for it.
Although.
I do just want to point out that I spent 15 minutes throwing knives at the wall trying to slot one in,
and although I came close, in the end I had to resort to movie magic and stage the thing.
Take from that what you will.
And if for some reason you feel you still can’t trust yourself,
why not pick up some of these?
They work for children.
For a while, anyway.
Thanks for watching, stay safe out there, be reasonable,
and eat your vegetables.
♫ pedantically smooth jazz ♫
Hey, just so you know there’s gonna be a Connextras follow-up to this on tamper-resistant receptacles.
They are now a code requirement for new construction and I thought that they largely fix many of the problems we've been talking about
but I did a sanity check and revealed that, uh, not all designs do so.
Gonna talk about that over on the second channel if you’re interested.
It would be irrelevant in the vast majority of the time, oh.
[frustration sounds]
Good job, Steve, copying that.
There is a weird difference between three plong bleuh
I knew that was gonna be hard to say.
Imagine you’re working on
[clears throat]
blahbittybloobitybuddeh
Imagine you’re working on -
Say a prayer for the next person who reaches to pick up the next… what?
But holding the plug wrong and getting a nice little shock from it isn’t the only problem we face.
Some of them include a receptacle that’s not cooperating.
…power strip is plugged into the outlet under my desk at home.
It’s a beet cheek…
OK, so hopefully we can put this issue to rest.
Seriously, it irks me so much how apparently nobody considers right-angle plugs OR the fact that the "fix" doesn't do anything at all when two-prongers are in-use.
In hindsight, the Chicago arrangement with neutral on top might be the best...
But seriously, word to the wise, deep dish is for tourists, mostly.
Look up tavern style.
That's the real Chicago pizza.