"Upside-down" wall sockets

So which way should it be oriented when mounted on a ceiling or in the floor? Ground pin south facing?

I realise that, but I interpreted your statement To shield the pins the way they do in the UK, the pins have to stop making contact with the socket pins when pulled out far enough to expose bare pins, or the plug would have to fall out of the socket. to be about the UK plugs/sockets.

I /guess/ when you write "the ones", you are talking about US ones again, because that makes no sense in a UK environment.

Houses that still have the two-pin outlets are supposed to have GFCIs installed in each circuit. This is enforced if there is any remodeling done to the house. It's a trivial thing to do, so there isn't a reason not to.

That's a good idea but the real answer is to put the GFCI in an outlet on (upstream side of) the circuit.

Outlets are a minor (as in nonexistent) cause of fires. Worrying about them is just silly.

But only government can hold up the sky!

Away from the hot and neutral pins.

The theory says that when mounted sideways, the ground pin should be to the left but, again, there isn't any standard. Though the ones I can remember are to the left. Of course, with power strips all bets are off.

random angles? ;)

Indeed! In the realm of "highly improbable", that's right up there. Think about it: the metal bit would have to be very thin and flexible so that it wouldn't have to land perfectly horizontal. It would have a very small target - the plug still stuck in the receptacle (3/8", maybe).

Then there's the narrow window between poofing (e.g., a piece of tinsel) and popping the breaker. What bit of metal could just sit there and be a danger? I suppose in a hospital, popping the breaker could itself be the danger. But the improbability is still enormous.

It smells to me like the product of a electrical-code writer having too much time on his hands.

Bob

In hospitals, the "cover plates" are frequently METAL (stainless). In the absence (or loosening) of the SINGLE screw that attaches the outlet plate to the duplex receptacle, the plate has a very REAL chance of slipping off it's "balanced" position on the protruding edge of the receptacle. Imagine how this would react with a PAIR of hot-neutral blades vs. a single EARTHed post.

Note, also, that hospital settings tend to have a pretty high concentration of outlets. And, at heights often different than the nominal "foot off the floor" encountered in homes.

Additionally, hospitals tend to have lots of things MOUNTED on the wall. Things with "dangling portions" .

When mounted sideways, the neutral conductor (wider blade or 'T' shaped slot) is mounted to the top.

Another way of looking at it is: JUSTIFY the opposite orientation! (do you like smiley faces?)

On 11/9/2016 8:58 PM, Don Y wrote: ...

I'm not promoting the opposite way, I'm criticizing it being mandated one way.

That must be because it is not a standardized recess, as in Schuko and Switzerland-type sockets.

Oh but I have been shocked by 230v a number of times and I am also still there. That does not mean that others had the same luck.

(crucial is that when you touch a "low voltage" like that your muscles contract, and when that disconnects you from the source there will be no permanent problem. when it makes you grab the source and hold on to it, it is a different story, both at 230 and 115 V)

I've found very distinctly warm plugs and sockets. The cause was long-term copper wire creeping where compressed in a joint.

Easy to fix in the cases where screws provide the compression.

Also I don't think the "Outlets are a minor (as in nonexistent) cause of fires" claim can be backed up by statistics. We often hear in the news that "the fire was caused by an electrical short" and of course THAT is silly. An electrical short does not dissipate power and will cause a fuse to be blown, not a fire.

What can easily cause a fire is an increased resistance in a high-current path, and an outlet is a place where it could happen.

Electrical codes are full of nonobvious and very expensive wisdom.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Don't be such a pedantic asshole. You sound like Slowman.

Of course "shorts" cause fires. None have zero resistance and there is still resistance in the wiring to the short.

It's more often caused by over-current but not enough to trip the OC device. ...or the OC device has Lincoln's picture on it.

Yep. One instructor I had said that the NEC had been paid for in blood.

There is not much standardized about the US plugs or sockets. Just the holes and the pins.

There's no such thing as an "Upside-down" receptacle. Receptacle orientation is not mandated in the NEC. There have been proposals to include receptacle orientation, but they have all been rejected. See:

Ed