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DerbyDad03 DerbyDad03 is offline
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Default Electrical Outlets Upside Down? Code?

On Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 12:02:43 PM UTC-4, FromTheRafters wrote:
DerbyDad03 used his keyboard to write :
On Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 7:39:29 AM UTC-4, Colonel Edmund J. Burke
wrote:
On 9/28/2016 6:18 PM, TomR wrote:
A friend of mine asked me today why the electrical outlets in my house
were "upside down". They are positioned with the ground pin hole at the
top and the two slots of the outlet on the bottom. I agree that, to me,
they "look" like they are upside down, and I think they would "look"
better with the ground pin hole on the bottom. But, my belief is that
the National Electrical Code (NEC) is silent on this question and that
there is no right or wrong orientation for electrical outlets.

My friend said that he has had code enforcement officials tell him that
electrical outlets with the ground pin hole on top were "upside down"
and that they needed to be reversed to be with the ground pin on the
bottom to pass the electrical inspection.

Is there anything in the NEC that says that one way is "upside down" and
the other way is the "correct" orientation?


This is a question I tackled, successfully, years ago, here at Sunset
Chateau.
The neutral pin on the top is a safety precaution all us expert
electrical types know about and perform on a routine basis. The purpose
of such arrangement is to prevent a short should, for example, someone
drop a metal object on partially exposed pins.


Neutral pin? On the top?

That can only happen if the receptacle is mounted sideways. I'd hardly
consider that to be "routine".


Most of my baseboard (or mopboard?) outlets are sideways. The house was
built in 1910 with that open standoff insulator wiring but has been
rewired since.


Open Standoff --- Knob and Tube

Regardless, sideways receptacles are far from "routine" but bTj
won't admit his error anyway.

Interesting "wiring coincidence" Knob and Tube wiring

The first time I encountered K&T wiring was when I was young kid and saw
it in my Aunt's house. She lived on Narragansett Blvd. A couple of decades
later, this same Aunt gave me some money to use as the down payment on my
first house. 350 miles away and in a different state. This house was wired
with the old-fashioned cloth-covered "romex". The brand name on most of it
was Narragansett.

Spooky!