odd observation..

[ImNotRight]

Been spending a lot of time in the hopsital with the wife lately, and noticed all their outlets are installed upside down, i.e. with the ground prong up instead of most home applications being below.

Is there some reason for that?

[hotcowboy76]

Its because they are holding you by the ankles shaking the money out of your pockets! :flipoff2: Sorry no idea here :confused:

[Eric]

We install outlets upside down (ground prong up) when the outlet is near the floor because the power cord always has a tendancy to pull out and down which exposes the ground prong first......not the HOT and Neu leads.

Make sense?

[glfredrick]

I almost always install mine ground plug up - my entire house is that way. That way, when you plug in stuff that is polarity specific (like all the power supplies that run everything these days) they will hang down instead of point up.

[speedaholic]

Have to agree with Eric on that. I was taught in school to always install w/ ground up so if something fell in that little gap when the plug was halfway out it wound not cause a dead short.

[D60]

According to the book I got from Home Depot either method is acceptable and it's mostly a regional preference thing.

[Oxjockey]

This is a hot topic at http://www.mikeholt.com 's forums. Apparently, hospitals require it for Eric's reasons, but the ground down is good for water accumulation, ie flooding and box filling or something.

Go over there and search for ground up ground down or outlet orientation.

[Eric]

Water accumulation is a concern for areas where floods or water hazzards may be an issue. No matter what you are doing, you always have to make compromises. There is no code that tells you which way to mount the outlets so you have to access the situation and mount it the way you want. There is no chance of water accumulation in my house (unless the roof leaks or water line breaks and fills the outlet boxes???) so I mount them ground up.

[tippy99888]

Ground up is good in a shop, where conductive material is always leaning up against the wall, if your using a plastic plate, a piece of metal can fall on the hot lead and then you have a live chunk of metal just waiting for someone to touch it. I guess its possible to happen with a steel plate, but very unlikely. Some like the ground up cause the pin is longer and when the cord is hanging, it wiggles out less. I put ground up, pro's out way the cons. And for future referance, dead shorts aren't always a bad thing, Fuses are cheap.

[unimogken]

I have noticed alot of this also.

A couple of my friends just bought new houses made by Quadrant and the bedrooms don't have overhead lights. Instead they have a switch near the entrance and have an upside down outlet somewhere in the room and the plug on the bottom is the one that is controlled by the switch. Seemed odd but makde some sense also.. hehe