Ugh. I can't watch this right now. There is nothing in code. Arguments for both orientations. People have specifically asked nec for a policy and they have outright refused.
The right angle plug on my AC is upside down, debating rotating the outlet so the cable doesnt go straight up, but I rent. Could my landlord get mad at me for such a simple procedure? I have access to the breakers so there isnt an access issue.
It was legit shocking to hear "I DON'T CARE" from the man who made videos about the colour of turn signals, the perfect warm Christmas lights, did a deep dive on different lantern technologies... I just didn't know Alec had it in him!
champion where exactly? I went to state and didnt see ya? i went to the nationals and you werent there? i was throwing knives at walls in effin luxembourg and were you around? nope. I CALL BS. BOO THIS FRAUD. i might be thinking of volleyball....but just in case BOO HIM ANYWAY
What I took away from this is the correct, best orientation is "Sideways, with ground plugs on opposite sides from each other so two right angle plugs can be used together" and I'm all for this idea personally.
@josiahferrell5022 that would work too, though I'm not sure which would be harder to wire up. Iirc the wires plug into the sides of the sockets, and by having then next to each other you run the risk of a short or having electricity arc. If they're just flipped from each other the wires wouldn't be closer than if they both faced the same way.
Sort of reminds me of the 'specialty' housings I've seen in places like professional kitchens & chemistry labs which are intended to be installed "sideways" - so the plugs are side-by-side instead of over-under, but oriented upright.
The thing that annoys me about the ones in my house installed "properly" is that all of the decorative night lights I have end up being upside down because of that prong that's larger. My hair dryer and several other things end up having to be plugged in upside down with the cord coming off the top rather than the bottom. I'm having all my outlets changed to the "face" orientation so they work with my appliances and night lights.
most night lights have a little screw in them to flip them without having to turn the outlet upside down, just loosen it, turn it right side up, then re-tighten the night light. Thats what i do with mine. I hope this helps
After I bought my house I noticed that all the outlets were installed ground up. I said "no way" and spent an afternoon flipping them all the "Right way" with ground down "O Face". That's the way it's supposed to be in my opinion. I've only started seeing "ground up" outlets in the last few years. I don't like it. Sorry.
15:12 Not only does the 45° angle mean you can put two plugs in adjacent sockets in an outlet, it also works if those two sockets are side-by-side instead of stacked! I really wish more plugs came like this; it makes things so much tidier.
Me too, I really appreciate a 45 degree angle plug. I can move my furniture closer to the wall without having to worry about smashing a cable and starting a fire. It should be the default plug style without question.
Here in schuko-land it's common for power strips to have 45° angles for their sockets so you can use 4-8 right angle plugs without interference. Wall sockets are usually vertical, unlike the UK with their giant fuse box/plug hybrids, but it's less of an issue since neither socket or plug has an up or down orientation and the plugs are much more securely held than the US ones (sockets that actually use the retaining bar holes excepted, not that I ever encountered one when I lived in California).
Electronic engineer here, 50 years experience. This is an excellent video and explains a number of questions I've had about why plug designs are as they are. Suggestion: clarify what shocks are uncomfortable vs. those that could be life-threatening. If a momentary shock is across one finger or between two fingers on the same hand, it's educational. If it's between two hands and so passes through the chest, that could be a more terminal education.
I was told that the ground prong should be on the bottom because when the plug tilted down the ground would still be fully in, preventing shock. Is that correct?
@@nancylindsay4255 A common misconception is that the ground prevents shock, it's more of a "signal wire" that detects potential to ground. Let's say your toaster is damaged, the metal body shouldn't become electrified because it's grounded. So if you plug it in the breaker should trip.
My impression is that the ground pin is typically grounds the metal chassis. So, if there is a short, it has a lower resistance connection to ground vs., for example, a human body touching the outside of the metal toaster. This has the effect of tripping the breaker, only because the lower resistance connection to ground causes the amperage draw to go beyond the rating of the breaker... however, the idea of the separate ground is to given the AC power lower resistance path to ground than the human body.
As a remodeling contractor, I can confirm that the tape-measure scenario is a.) real, and b.) will scare the pants off you. 😅 I almost welded my tape to an uncovered live outlet once, and it still has a sharp notch in the blade that I have to watch out for.
Yes, but with changes to circuit breaker design, is that even a problem that's going to exist in 50 years? Even today, I don't see this being a particularly common problem to have. Between the GFCI and AFCI being mandated, Fresh Princing the outlet doesn't really do anything that the advanced features don't do better. Then there's AFCI that's likely to be incorporated in every single circuit at some point, rather than just the relatively long list of rooms that it's currently required for. You'd likely get far more safety out of making it easier to replace loose outlets that can't retain the items plugged into them any more than flipping them upside down.
Most circuit breakers take a couple milliseconds to open, enough time for nasty sparks and welding if it's a dead short. Most electricity related injuries are caused by secondary events, like falling off the ladder when instinctively retreating from the loud bang.
For an Austrian engineer like me, your wall socket videos are always so entertaining! I constantly go back and forward from "wow, how crappy and dangerous are these" to "well, it´s only a 110 volts" :D
For an American like me, I'm just happy to know that your country doesn't have kangaroos and Foster's beer. Man, my countrymen suck at geography. :) Bitte habt ein tolles Oktoberfest
I’m an electrician of many years exp (I’m lvl 47) and I must tell you, I have never even meet anyone who has been troubled by the very singular and specific safety scenarios in your vid. And you’re quite right about the NEC; even article 517 only goes as far as tamper resistance in pediatric facilities. Throw knives at the wall does sound enticing though.
The whole thing is an issue made up by some idiot who probably gets paid to make up nonexistent problems. In fact, the whole tamper resistant requirement is another non-issue probably legislated by someone who takes money from a company that would make a lot of money by forcing everyone to replace all their outlets. Even GFCI is a solution for a problem most people don't have. In my 50+ years on this planet, I have never had and never known anyone who would have benefited from any of these now mandated devices.
Electrician here. There are a few receptacles around houses that get installed ground up as standard in my company. Ill usually set receptacles ground up under sinks for disposals whips. They factory installed whips tend to be right-angled plugs and interfere with available storage. Ill also set them ground up behind gas ovens that have igniters and clocks. People like to hang things behind and set things on the valve plate. If somebody misses the hook when they hang a metal spatula and drop it on the plug behind the oven, it keeps it from shorting. Same goes for washers and dryers and any other kind of slide-in/foot-mounted appliances. Basically if the environment would funnel flat things to the recept, I'll set them ground up.
But engineers at the yacht company I used to work for disagree. Plugs tend to fall out of your "proper" orientation more than the correct way. Also, plugs tend to break out the plastic above the ground hole in a working environment. I was an inspector of finished yachts and wrote them up countless times for the plugs being upside down or the ground hole being broken out.
One has to hope the ground up plug was placed in a good spot as many stoves have limited area behind them for plug room, mainly at just the very bottom near the floor.. A mis-placed outlet means the stove will have to be 4 or 5 inches away from the wall, thus sticking out from counters etc. Not really feasible for most.
sounds like it should usually be "ground towards where the outlet's electricity is going to go", since right-angle plugs tend to also be "ground towards the device", so when the outlet's directly underneath the sink machinery, makes sense to install it "ground up"
Electrician here- The Code called for ground up in commercial applications for a very short time, but now officially either orientation is considered correct. Some old fogeys are very, very particular about it, no one else cares. Edit: also, aside from someone standing barefoot on a grounded steel floor while getting sprayed down with saltwater, many casual contacts with a piece of metal that happens to touch the live pin result in nothing happening unless you bridge the metal to a grounded surface and make a spark and pop a breaker.
The quirk with hospitals, best I can tell, is the call for “hospital-grade” outlets in certain spaces and those marketed as ground up. What I was told by facilities is that it’s to comply with preventing loose cords in patient areas but like you said; old fogeys. I’ve stared at them ground up for so long that’s just “normal” for me.
Moreover.. in my entire life I've never known a single person who died from 120v to the finger from a wall receptacle, which would easily run into the thousands if every shock among us was counted collectively (everyone I know that is; not the 1-off weird ones you see in the news once a decade or so)
It's a blessing and a curse that you only have 120 V to these sockets. On one hand, it's not that harmful that you have unsafe sockets. On the other hand, surely you would have safer sockets by now. The change to safer sockets wasn't without its quirks in Europe either but it was well worth it.
@@jattikuukunen now that said I definitely wouldn't mind more 240v appliances around the house myself just for the bit of efficiency like elec kettle, hair dryers, space heater things like that, but I understand and I get it.. having decades and decades and decades of what we've got, it's absolutely unfeasible to even offer those especially since hardly anyone would install the special sockets, even some of the biggest window unit AC's you can buy now run on 15a 110v, they're good enough that no one really buys the 220v one anymore so you rarely see them in the big box stores. You won't even find 30a horizontal blade sockets (I forget what those were called) anywhere but old houses anymore
@@jattikuukunen Then there's also the Brazilian plug, which is a great design in therms of passive protection (the sleeved pins and recessed socket), but just cause they HAVE to screw things up in Brazil and milk us some extra, it's the exact same thing as the Swiss plug but with some small fraction of a millimeter higher or lower on the ground pin, just to be another plug type.
As an electrician, I was once in a situation where a co worker was filling a room with 150' of metal fish tape. It ended up spoiling over the very loose plug of a fan, and shot sparks all around the room. But of course, the cord wasn't grounded so it wouldn't have mattered, as you said.
I've done something similar. There was an extension cord on the ground near where I was feeding a fish tape. It was still in the conduit, and I felt it getting hot in my hands. The two pieces weren't fully connected. And it didn't damage the fish tape. I think it tripped the breaker, but not quickly. When using cheap extension cords, the voltage drop is pretty high. High enough that it won't actually trip a breaker due to the high resistance and therefore low current. But, it'll still give you something to chew on if you touch the live bits.
@@IceBergGeoEven the cheapest extension cord wouldn't have a high enough resistance to avoid flipping a breaker when shorted. More likely that the fish tape only made contact with the hot pin and was also in contact with something grounded (like a conduit or pipe). Steel is a surprisingly lousy electrical conductor, so over a few meters it could definitely avoid immediately flipping the breaker while also getting really hot.
This reminds me of my dorm room in college where a horizontal metal shelf hanger was installed right above an outlet. If my roommate and I weren't careful, the plug blades would short out on the support and trip the breaker for our side of the hall. Inevitably it happened one evening when one of our hallmates was typing up a paper he inexplicably hadn't saved in over an hour. We could hear him screaming two doors down.
This is why I love Google Docs (perhaps there's something better, but.) It autosaves without needing to do anything. I don't have to give it a file name or save it to a location, it's just saved and so is the history. Cloud accessible, sharability, and it's free. I've lost so many writings over the years, that I write my longer social media posts in it, too. Just not worth rolling a late-night sanity check when an app fumbles.
What was he typing his paper in? All of MS Word, LibreOffice Writer and Google Docs silently save every few keystrokes, and have done so for over a decade now. Word and LibreOffice save to recovery files and offer to restore them when you launch the program next, and Google Docs saves the document directly.
Lol. You just reminded me when I had something similar happen in my old dorm back 20 years ago (fuck it’s been that long). Our dorms electricity could barely handle a toaster let alone a microwave. The electricity was set up that a block, which is 6 dorms, all shared 1 circuit. And it was known that if you wanted to use a real microwave in your dorm and to a refrigerator microwave, you had to be sure no one else was using anything with a high draw. Enter finals week, which for my school meant coffee, coffee and more coffee, did I mention there was a lot of coffee. Almost every room had a coffee maker going because we had no place to buy a cup of coffee. 1 guy had brought in a smallish microwave. The stars aligned one night as his entire block had turned on their coffee makers and computers (desktops were very common then) and he turned on his microwave. 2 guys were working on their final papers and lost a lot of progress. The situation devolved and the guy with the microwave got hurt pretty bad.
I still have my dads old aluminum 4-foot ruler with two small bites taken out of the edge. They were caused when I was a tyke, it was leaned up against a wall, and my clumsy 6 year old self went flying by and knocked it over. It tipped and landed on a plug. It just happened to land behind its balance point, so it pivoted on the prongs. When it hit level, it shorted those prongs and POW!, vaporized those two little bites right off the edge. One in a zillion, but boy was it exciting! Literally a once-in-a-lifetime, so I'm still not flipping my outlets.
Type E, F and H plugs we have here and in Europe have recessed sockets so that even if slightly pulled out (which is also very unlikely due to other design decisions) nothing falling on them will be able to touch the live wire.
@@sakurajin_noa In the UK, our plugs are way too bulky to wire them in any other way than the "norm" with the Earth pin at the top That, and we don't care about kids getting their fingers in them because they simply wouldn't fit and if they DID fit somehow they'd meet a plastic shutter
I worked maintenance in nursing homes for 28 years. I ran into this issue one year from the annual health and safety inspection. We were using beaded chain (the kind you see on a lot of ceiling fans) on our over bed lights. The inspector told me about a fire in some nursing home due to the chain falling back into the bent plug. We had to change all of them with nylon cord.
Yea that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Glad to here you guys took preventive measures to keep those older and or disabled family members safe. Thanks🙏 I have never paid attention wether the reading lamps at my mother’s assisted living apartment had metal chains. I’ll be sure to check when I visit tomorrow
Would it not be easier to change all outlets to safer ones ? If the building code , when lead (pipes, solder and flux) in public water systems was banned in 1986 In US , would have mandated better outlets and plugs , if building has renovation done, most of US homes would most likely have new outlets by now . With water pipes you need to rip old systems out , with outlets its just to change it , cost is what those outlets cost , what is that $5 per outlet ? We changed old two pin outlets to Euro plugs , ban came in 1997 here in Finland , starting with new buildings , now you should have even arc protection . I still have in summer cottage , one old outlet , its nearly as dangerous than American , if you use 50 year old plugs , you do have outlet area a bit below surface .
As far as I know the rules about lead pipes allowed older installations to remain until they need replacement anyway, as the risk of lead contamination is negligible with normal running water flowing in the pipe, however a change to outlets and/or plugs would potentially require a wholesale replacement as compatibility would break (obviously adaptors could mitigate this and it would be fine but.. guess people aren't that creative?)
@@pete_lind It's a similar vein to the LED/Incandescent bulb fights... You gotta consider, not only just how incredibly BIG the U.S. really is... BUT also that the U.S. industrialized like NOBODY else in the world, and the shear numbers that encounters. It doesn't even matter any longer who does the actual physical manufacturing, either. The numbers that were once so ungodly above and beyond the facility or imaginings in the 1890's became the "default normal" by the 1920's... and by the 60's if you couldn't contribute a few million a year, you just couldn't be a manufacturer... The side effect is warehouseS (cap-s for emphasis) completely stocked floors to ceilings with the old "dangerous" outlets. It's just how industry rolls in the U.S. and to fail to "get big or go home" is the obvious hindrance to competition. There REALLY WERE warehouses of unused incandescent lights all over the country, and corporations that owned them threatened seriously with losing their figurative asses on the advancement of LED-lighting, so there will continue to be such arguments and fights for years to come, even if it seems relatively quietly going away... Same with the corporate blockade on updating anything in the electrical code elsewhere. It's gotten along fine with fairly seldom accidents and injuries over the bigger picture, so the U.S. business world is fine with letting Darwin sort out the end consumers. It shouldn't surprise you that when the building codes and National standards outlawed lead in the U.S. rather than dig up and retrofit all the old pipes for new ones, they added phosphates to the water supply and left the existing infrastructure alone. LOTS of American cities and towns and yes, EVEN houses and apartment buildings still have lead fittings in their pipes from city mains all the way through... The lead crisis in Flint Michigan was down to the city council failing to add the phosphates when they decided to send their own pipes to the lake to get water, instead of paying the slightly higher price for the processing plants to continue supplying it. It's like that ALL OVER THE COUNTRY... AND there are "Scenic Historical Districts" where Historical Societies and Associations have lobbied their way into local governance and you literally have to get permission from the city to replace things like the shingling on your roof or your rain guttering system, and they'll send you back a list of "appropriate products" to choose from when (and if) they even give you that permission... SO you can figure the odds of getting permission to gut a historical house out and retrofit the plumbing, because you'll get inspectors up your backside by the dozen... and pay them servicing fees ON TOP of the local taxes and the city's requisite considerations. There's a dollar to be made, so you can bet your last ounce of dying breath they'll find a way to suck it out of you. ;o)
@@pete_lind I don’t know the details of the transition you mentioned. We’re the new outlets somehow backwards compatible with old plugs? Or was it a situation where everyone needed to pick up a ton of adapters to use old plugs in new outlets (and vice versa). The thing with lead pipes is they never mandated old buildings to retrofit, they just required new installations to stop using lead. Most people would see no observable change from the regulation. Unless the old and new plugs are somehow compatible, then I would think the transition would require several years of irritation with adapters. I honestly dont think most people here view the safety issues with the current outlets as being significant enough to warrant the inconvenience of fixing it.
I've actually had the "foreign objects" scenario come to pass -- a coin fell down behind a sideboard and shorted out the plug. Very startling when it went off.
I live in Chicago and when you mentioned the sideways outlets I spun around my room in disbelief to realize that all of them are indeed sideways and I never thought a thing of it. Thanks for heightening my awareness of my environment I suppose.
As a European (Dane, specifically), I am shocked at how easily North American plugs can become partially unseated. Relatedly, I would find it very interesting, if you would do a "compare and contrast" of other plug types from around the world, especially the Euro Schuko type F as well as the Danish type K. Also type C is extremely common.
Can't forget the Type G as well. It's basically everything he complained about, solved (sleeved, grounded, standardised right angle). And, yes, I went to the states with a MacBook charger and it was an awful and dangerous experience. It literally fell out the wall and sparked.
All of the outlets in every one of my apartments in Quebec have been mounted ground up. When I first moved here I looked into why, and a lot of places just said "they're safer" and cited the same reasons here. I have yet to be electrocuted during a traditional game of Jette le Couteau á la Mur, but it does come with the additional annoyances mentioned.
I'm STILL chuckling at Steve Mould's homage to your presentation style and for you to now be directly addressing him in your blooper reels is making it even better.
Yes and weirdly hostile. Either some great acting or the homage by Steve was unappreciated. Everyone loves a good RUclips creator beef. I hope we can see the escalation increase in a subtle but definite "Those who know, know" kinda way.
I work at a medical college. A couple years ago, one of our wings went through a major renovation. I noticed that the electricians were installing all of the outlets upside down with the ground pin on top. I asked one of them why. He said, "I dunno, it's what the boss wants."
@@danl6634 We're not a hospital, though. Accordingly, the other outlets in the building are not upside down. That's why I wonder why they were doing it.
Code requires the U ground to face up because most people use their thumb on top of a plug to pull it out. In turn your thumb can touch the metal prong so if the outlet is not installed with the U ground facing up a person can potentially touch the hot and neutral prongs with their thumb as they remove a plug.
My mother got a new refrigerator ( a long time ago ) with a right angle plug with the ground pin on top. She told me to flip the outlet. Of course having worked in the field I just had to have the quite common gall to 'properly' inform her that's impossible. She called me a liar and 'questioned' my professionalism, so we entered into a spittle blowing contest which I decided to end about a half hour later by pulling the refrigerator out and scalding her about her impossible dream scape! But I didn't say anything as I quieted down humbly and went outside to my truck to get my toolbox. When I unplugged the refrigerator and looked unbelievably at it sure enough the ground pin was on top. The first moral of the story is sometimes you run across the strangest most bizarre things. And moral number two is, sometimes the impossible happens and mother is right about something in your chosen profession.
@@k.b.tidwell Sometimes the self-taught people can be more knowledgeable about certain aspects. They don't have the "well this is how it was always done" mentality that some professionals fall victim to.
Your ability to make me interested in something I have never thought nor cared about, and actually provide a sense of enjoyment and education in the process, is amazing. This is one of my favorite channels.
I worked at a senior living facility in their corporate office. We once got to take a tour of one of our facilities, and they were really proud of installing the plugs upside down, because it was “safer” for the residents.
I was a victim of the “falling metal wall plate” scenario. I had the room painted and the painter removed the wall plates. Afterwards he forgot to screw in the plate. I went to plug something in and the plate fell down and shorted out. Sparks and a nasty char mark was the result.
As a writing professor, I'm always delighted with your scripts. Thanks for the effort you put into these videos - they're always informative and well executed!
I went on holiday to America recently, and i was really surprised at how loose the plugs were compared to other places I've been. Living in the UK, plugs will only expose pins if you VERY deliberately pull it from the wall, at which point, the connection is already broken. Edit: Also almost all plugs are 90 degree plugs.
@@KeyDx7 Also, frequently used plugs. If they stayed in a hotel where people were plugging and unplugging things everyday, then it would be more surprising if they werent worn out
@@KeyDx7 yeah but no matter what no one can argue that UK and EU plugs aren't superior to US ones in every single way... it just makes sense since they could look at everything wrong with the US one and improve on it.
@@KeyDx7 But then, perhaps that's an additional point, even old plugs and outlets in the UK still work fine, they don't wear out in such an equivalent manner. I know what ethstring means though, when I visited NYC in 2000 I was surprised at how iffy the wall sockets & cable connections were. About 20 years ago I began seeing UK plugs with a chunky switch and LED indicator already included, which are totally awesome (perfect for extension leads that don't have their own switch for each socket). They were very cheap, 45p at the time from B&Q. I bought a whole box, so useful for devices such as soldering irons. But then after a few years they vanished from stores, returning some years later in basically the same design but a lot more expensive, needlessly so I would presume. Marketed as 'new' of course, but the idea isn't. In the UK I reckon the only reason why wall sockets get replaced is if they physically break somehow (very rare), as part of a full rewiring or just for cosmetic reasons, such as vintage brass outlets tarnishing. Funny thing, when a property is rewired, all the existing sockets are replaced even if there's nothing wrong with them. Great opportunity to nab some free sockets for future use. The place I rent was rewired a few years ago, so now I have a whole bag of spares. It doesn't take much to clean them up so they're good as new. A bigger issue perhaps with UK sockets (and indeed plugs) is more of a hidden one, namely the quality of the actual wiring connections inside the socket or plug. A lot of electricians have pretty shoddy wiring abilities, grud knows why, and many home users have little clue either. When I've removed cables from plugs or worked on wall sockets, encountering less than ideal stripped ends is all too common. Some decades ago it was common for products to be sold with no plug attached at all, one bought them separately, which at least provided some aesthetic choice at the expense of a little hidden cost, but it meant that as a child in I'd say pre-80s Britain it was common to be taught how to wire a plug, whereas as nowadays I bet few parents bother, or even know themselves. As for standing on the pins of a loose plug, that's just a clever extra design feature intended to pretrain future parents to the evils of loose Lego pieces. :) Lastly, many UK plugs are separate to the cable, so they can at least be reused, but as mentioned this means the wiring needs to be decent, so one could argue the moulded plug has an advantage there even if it lacks reuse. That's an oddity I've noticed of some very old plus, the way the cord is gripped can be a little odd.
@@KeyDx7 The spectrum is part of the problem, that spectrum doesn't exist on the standard UK/EU plugs, if you find one that is 50 year old here it is still perfectly safe to use unless damaged by something else than everyday use.
@@KeyDx7 I mean it depends on code too / the electrician In Pakistan, they typically use the two pin style plug sockets and we've got the odd UK sockets in the house too. The UK sockets are solid. The two pin style sockets, not so much The house was built about a decade ago I believe
..and it is fused so that you need skills tools and spare parts to find and repair faults, Oh and its shutters need to be released by an earth pin, so you need an eath pin even when you don't need an earth pin. And its big and expensive.
This video made me realize how much safer the European plugs and sockets are. For example: the sockets are recessed into the wall by a fair amount, right angle plugs are pretty common, and designed to be much beefier and in a way that they can be stacked one above the other. Some even have a ring to pull on to make removal easy
The smaller the manufacturing and supply of a given product, the easier it is to make changes in that industry. Progress is stifled by over supply of older engineering/tech.
@@cambridgemart2075 So are you suggesting that I'm suggesting something that I never said or implied? My statement is in relation to the ability to make changes to commonly used objects for local use. IF anything, it's a compliment to Europe for being more flexible. Take the bait elsewhere.
My older home has all the outlets ground prong up and it drives me insane. Power strips and cable management is an absolute nightmare. I’ve replaced a few and rotated them but this video hit me harder than you know. Great stuff my man, keep up the good work!
I work in a building that has them all ground pin up. When I asked about it the site electrician explained that plugging in something, angling it in from above it makes for a better ground-first contact. But as someone who'd switched to using right-angle plugs for things wherever possible, they are an annoyance since they are now all angled upwards and therefore pull on the plug more. I'd actually like to have the whole wallplate rotated 90deg (but the plug still "vertical") so that having them side-by-side ought to be better than one above the other.
TOPIC SUGGESTION: There was a portable mini refrigeration device powered by a paraffin stove in the early 20th century called a "Crosley IcyBall". It had no moving parts and consisted of two chambers with water and ammonia. I was amazed at how simple its function.
The basic idea is still in use today, particularly in RVs. Their called evaporative cooling refrigerators. My 2017 camper's Fridge/freezer has no moving parts and is an ammonia cooled device that runs on either electric or propane. The difference is that the old device you're talking about uses paraffin as the heat source and modern RV refrigerators use either a small propane burner, or an electric heating element. In most cases, like mine, they run on either my 12v battery or propane, depending on which I decide to use at the time. The disadvantage is they are harder to control temperature and take a lot longer to cool than a compressor based fridge/freezer. My freezer usually gets down to 0 deg F, but it takes a while. They are still being sold in new RVs, but in the last 5 years or so, 12v compressor based refrigerators, or 120v by using an inverter have become more popular due to quicker cooling and more control.
@@raymorgan4657 - Thankyou . The Crosley Icyball Has vanished from life now. It was so simple. so low tech. I wonder if they have a use in disaster reliefe areas keeping phrmaceuticals cold.
@@timetraveller6643 The Icyball you mentioned may have vanished, but like I mentioned, the ammonia based, no moving parts cooling that is heated by a flame or heating coil hasn't. It's is still very much in use and sold today. Just look up 2-way or 3-way RV refrigerator. No moving parts at all, but the RV modern versions do use 12 volt from he battery to run a control board. On propane (instead of a paraffin burner) it simply heats the ammonia coil.
My father said their first refrigerator ran on kerosene. My first encyclopedias from back in 1957 only had a diagram of a kerosene refrigerator, not an electric one.
You are the only channel i could watch an 18 minute video on wall plugs and love it! It's weird i always see GFCI plugs installed correctly but never the standard ones!
Having looked at many apartments in the Chicagoland area, I can confirm that not only the classic vertical(0°) and horizontal (90°) positions exists, but a whole plethora of other options as well. Many landlords seem to prefer 37.2°, for example.
Former electrician here. My opinion on it is that if you step on a cord and pull the plug out of the wall, the ground plug will be the last thing to come out if it's in the classic orientation. That'll give you more protection from a serious shock, even if the risk of a minor shock is higher.
A listed receptacle will not let this easily happen. Ground prong contacts in a receptacle are closer to the face of the recept, and the ground prong is longer, too, so, regardless of orientation, it will break contact last. Yes, I know, people are banned for these discussions over at ET or Mike Holt's forums.
I don't think I believe that is true though. Considering how much longer the ground prong is, I don't think there is any orientation that would result in the ground being first to fall out in the event of an accident.
Think about it for a second. How do you get shocked. You need a complete path. That means voltage must have some place to go. With no ground path, no shock. You can literally put a finger on a live circuit and feel nothing other than a slight tingle, unless you are somehow grounded. Which is exactly the same as being grounded and touching a hot. Must have a path. Having a grounded outlet where the ground prong increases the likelihood of remaining connected only increases the likelihood of getting actually shocked by accident as you become the connecting conduit.
I love you unintentionally showing the dangers of a flathead and a wall receptacle at 8:30 by immediately jamming the screwdriver into the ground socket.
@@poulhenneI wonder if it’s because it’s nearly impossible to drive one of those screws with an impact driver, thus reducing the possibility of cracking the cover plate. Probably not, though.
@@poulhenne I always assumed it was for aesthetics. An exposed flathead screw looks slightly nicer than an exposed phillips-head. The paint on a phillips-head is also more likely to get scratched because the screwdriver naturally cams out when the screw is tightened all the way, scratching a bit of paint out of the "plus" in the process. Flathead screw drivers don't cam out and thus don't scratch the paint nearly as much (unless the screw is already damaged).
As a curious first grader, I was able to notice that electric appliances got whatever it was that they needed out of those two pin outlets on the wall. This was before three hole outlets became the thing. I was also able to figure out that metal was an important factor. It was then that I conducted my first known scientific experiment. It involved bending the legs of a hair pin and scraping the plastic blob off the ends. I was able to prove that electricity was dangerous if proper precautions were ignored.
That makes me so glad I grew up with a dad who used to work with electronics. He mostly fixed things like TVs and PCs, but he taught me a lot about safety, how things work, and I got to see him take apart and fix a laptop my cousin had a problem with. He let me use his voltage meter a few times to just experiment with what was conductive.
One thing I thought he should mention is the fact that two grounded right-angle plugs are impossible to use on the same outlet. This is why I think duplex receptacles should be installed horizontally (as compared to the current installation), but with the ground pins facing out on either side.
In my experience big right angle plugs for things like portable ac units block the second plug on purpose. The reason being that the one load is close enough to tripping the breaker that they don’t want you adding any more load to that circuit.
I work in biomed (in-hospital medical equipment repair) and the biggest culprit of the hot/neutral up facing short I saw were stainless steel plate covers coming loose and dropping onto prongs. They can't use plastic covers in the OR, it's an infection control issue. 2nd biggest was instruments falling on sagging outlets.
There must be at least dozens of ways to avoid 'sagging plugs" etc. in hospitals- recessed outlets, hooded/sleeved plugs like electric cars use, etc. etc. And I'm sure any manufacturer would love to corner the market of "hospital approved" hardware AND insurance companies and every other actor in the healthcare field would love it as another excuse to double or triple our already obscene healthcare bills! ( and I hope not many people have died because housekeeping or nurses accidentally bumped the ventilator cord and suffocated people! wth?)
@@dochi1958 All outlets and plugs are already hospital grade, thats what the green dot indicates if you look close at them. In theory plugs should be inspected for termination, tension, and plate fitment. That used to be a part of my job. But in practice there's not enough staff to do that regularly. All ventilators and other life support critical equipment are on internal battery backup and those batteries are replaced every 2 years even if they haven't even been used.
My favorite part of the north american outlet faceplate is that they only use flat head screws. So if you want to remove the faceplate, you have to use a tool the perfect shape to fit into the prong slots. Granted, you should turn off the breaker, but the added risk is also nice.
@@theguy9208 Firstly, LOL, Second, you gotta admit, using a flat head screw these days seems like a cunt move, the thing slips out and you gotta be perfectly paralell to undo it, if it hasn't already been knawed off by butter knives/coins/nail files
Yes, as a confirmation, look at 8:30 where Mr Technology Connections accidentially slips into the ground hole. That could as well have been the live socket...
Immm, no screwdriver is going to go in far enough to hit any metal inside the receptacle. It'll taper out way too wide to go in more than 1/8th of an inch. Also, this is plain Darwin award territory.
Since 1975 after I graduated 3 years of electrical school, I install ground down. Why?? EVERY 90 degree outlet for refrigerators the ground is closest to the power cord. I also installed the designated refrigerator/freezer outlets at the same height as the counter top outlets, Then when plugged in, the refrigerator cord is pointing toward the floor. Ground up the cord would point up and have to do a U-Turn to go down to the electric panel on the refrigerator. I see you included this information in the video. I wrote everything before that section came up. And frankly, even on construction sites, with the ground down, I have never seen any situation occur like you state in this video. Bottom line, I will continue to install outlets with ground down!
@TechnologyConnections The metal ruler thing actually happened to me once. The receptacle was behind a desk and a metal ruler fell into the narrow gap between the desk and the wall, lining the ruler up parallel to the wall so it fell just right, hitting one exposed blade and then likely pivoting to hit the other. I can see such a gap making this much more likely over random knife throwing~
There is a simple solution to this problem that is common in Europe, that I am surprised is not a thing in the USA. In Europe, type C, E and F sockets take plugs with pins that aren't sleeved either. The solution is to recess or shroud them by the length of the pins minus the usual distance between the face plate and the contacts on the inside. That way, because those plugs have a standardized round flange that fits neatly in the recess, you need to insert the plug past the point where you can no longer touch the pins before contact is made. Since the blades on North-American plugs are quite thin it's a better solution than sleeving the pins. Although there's probably quite a lot of wall warts and angled plugs out there that won't fit in a recessed plug very well, but it wouldn't be that hard to design some kind of screw-on adapter to make those compatible as well.
@@SnakebitSTI I just thought of that too but I was still editing the comment. Yeah, it's going to be hard to make that work without breaking compatibility with some devices. Not that big a deal in my opinion: what you'd do as a legislator is standardize the design of the plug first, and then change the socket standard, maybe 5 or 10 years later. Any equipment that is incompatible, hasn't been replaced by then and is worth keeping could then be equipped with some kind of permanently attached adapter.
@@SnakebitSTI The entire EU just adopted an entirely new, common light fixture connector, the DCL (Device for Connection of Luminaires), making all existing obsolete. Radical solution, ditch the 120V "neutral" and go straight to 240V with one of the European connectors (there are a few varieties to choose among, let Alex try them out and make a nation wide decision) as the new standard for all new constructions. Might even go to 50 Hz for extra compatibility, though that's optional.
@@johanmetreus1268 As someone from an EU country, this is the first time I've ever heard about this connector. I can't even find any lamps for sale that use it, at least not explicitly mentioned. I can't even find much information on how and where the connector is suppressed to be used. As far as I'm aware all our lamps, at least residential ones, are either hard-wired using splicing connectors (for fixed lamps) or use standard wall plugs (for movable lamps).
@@SnakebitSTIyou can just google *Leviton decora 15 amp residential grade 1 gang recessed duplex receptacle outlet* and perhaps with half recessed distance as standard.
@@johanmetreus1268 changing the frequency would have to be done simultaneously across the entire grid, it'd be almost impossible and would break stuff that expects 60hz. Honestly most things people would want to travel with are trivial to build to tolerate either anyway, they just convert it to DC for internal use! Probably because a lot of them were designed by the Japanese, actually, and they managed to screw up their grid badly enough that half the country runs on 50 and half on 60
Due to right angle plugs I really like the idea of all of them being opposite so that the ground are always on the outside edge of the receptacle. I really hate when you can't use two plugs on a duo wall receptacle.
What I'd really like to see are sideways pairs that both have the ground pin down so you could put two right angle plugs in and both would have the cords hanging down.
I just love how all the plugs are different and that if you have an extension chord to fit all kinds, and even diagonally so they won't bug each other, you're still screwed no matter what you do :p Because, you know, all plugs are different, so some might be bigger, others might be smaller, some might be right angle but oriented diagonally, and so on, and so forth. And that's a problem everywhere, even here in Europe. Also, pedantic fun fact, where I live we call receptacles a stopcontact, which could mean breaker contact or stop contact and I honestly don't know which, if either, and I really don't want to know because neither makes any sense, but then pedantic people will say that the "proper" name is wall contact box 🤣Which I just find such a gosh darn improvement 🤣 It's not wrong, like how a piano is a hammer trigger machine box. Oh, and the one on an extension chord is a table contact box 🤣I mean, at least then call it a 6/7 floor contact box because about 6 out of 7 times it's NOT on a table! :p And some have a little plastic loop so you can hang them from things, so then it's not on a floor or a table. But whatever, language is fun, and very often very silly :) Most people around here call it either an extension chord or a plug box. I think plug box is a nice find. It works, it's descriptive (all though it has no plugs until you put one or more in) and would work for wall receptacles as well. So we'll never use the only term that sort of makes half sense for all the things it makes sense for because that would be confusing 🤣
Man... I am so over my outlet cover screw always backing out. I'm also tired of dropping metal objects in that 1/8 gap on my plugs its such a problem. I'm glad someone took the time out of their day to fix this problem plaguing America. THANK YOU!
Outlet orientation indeed seems like the least of my problems. What really grinds my gears is the complete inability for anyone to make up their minds on the rectangular orientation of power strips versus wall warts, so there's always a 50-50 chance of whether you end up with a combination that doesn't waste up to 3 adjacent receptacles just to insert one item.
This! I buy a power strip with outwards facing plugs and I get sideways facing bricks. While there opposite occurs when they’re in a line. Then there’s the power bricks that are simply chunky on all sides and don’t care about your plug config because they’re covering them all regardless
I have a power strip that advertised itself as unblockable. It has its sockets at a 45 degree angle, and then each one is on a segment that can telescope out a bit over an inch in either direction. I have just one massively oversized power brick for a set of PC speakers that manages to hog 2 outlets when used on this thing. Why do they make power *strips* though? Why aren't power *octopuses* more common?
@@joemck85 Cheapness is why. Open a power strip and you will find cheap uninsulated buss bars normally. The rotating kind are different sure, but not that much.
In my 70+ years of life, I've been terrified by many things, but I can't remember the "orientation of receptacles" making the cut of scary things worth remembering. In fact, the times I've been shocked by less-than-fully-inserted plugs, and shocked by other things, my dad always reminded that my most recent shock was just one more thing to watch out for. During my following career in electronics I've discovered way more ways of being way more shocked way more often than the errant finger in the socket. The aluminum Christmas tree tinsel falling onto the tracks of the electric train set below was way more interesting!
Try a houseful of CATS... While none of the electrical nuisances in my childhood turned particularly injurious, there were LOTS of pretty interesting situations... ;o)
A much bigger danger from my experience is the insulation on cheap wires breaking and leaving exposed wires that can easily short. Even then, the only time I've been shocked by 120V AC is when a garbage (probably not approved) phone charger/ac adapter quite literally fell apart as I was pulling it out. The whole outer casing came off and when I tried to pull the receptacle and the circuit board inside out from the outlet so I could throw it away, I accidentally touched a component of the adapter and got a nasty shock from it. I stopped buying cheap shit after that, most of my AC adapters now are Anker ones because they're smaller and better. Basically, the biggest risk by far is cheap products that are built so poorly they expose 120V AC when they inevitably fall apart.
Right, this argument, and even more ridiculous arguments routinely made by Euros about their supposed superiority, are absolutely ridiculous. Australia is also particularly ridiculous. None of these supposed "safety" arguments are worth one additional penny to fix, you have to be almost suicidal or willfully negligent to get killed or seriously injured by any of these supposed problems.
@@Jehty_ Not common... The USA is an ENORMOUS place, and that leaves spaces where there aren't building inspectors or great enforcement... Electrical hazard by plugs outright are relatively small, even without shrink-wrapping the prongs or anything, it's rare to have even the occasional finger-zap without someone doing something a bit zany or nefarious outright... AND kids get into the damnedest sh*t for sometimes unfathomable reasons (curiosity?)... Even so, with a finger-zap, when the prongs are both RIGHT THERE... the shock goes across A finger... you jump and let go, and that's generally it... no worse for the wear and only a little rattled. We hear stories, but until it gets to shoving a pocket knife into a piece of electrical equipment or screwing around with screwdrivers or silverware in toasters (yes, there ARE Americans that stupid) real harm from household circuitry is pretty unheard of, that's why someone getting electrocuted in a shower or bath hit headlines. ;o)
I’m a master electrician it’s allowed either way but the main reason for the ground down is that if something pushes down you want the power to disconnect not the ground . Ground top makes your trigger finger under slip hit the hot . There’s a reason that the national code allows either argument can be made for both, but you do not want the ground to disconnect first .
I dropped a small screwdriver into a slightly exposed outlet as a kid. Sparked, melted a bit of the prongs and almost melted through the entire diameter of the screwdriver. I still have the screwdriver to this day as a reminder how dangerous electricity and plugs can be.
I have two thoughts: (1) when I wired my house, I went "frown up side down" because it's technically ever so slightly safer, but (B) the number of things that just Don't Work Well with ground-up outlets already had me thinking of changing them around. With this video, you've provided the final nail in the receptacle for me to stop procrastinating and start flipping them over.
I had to flip some at my Dad's house for timers that would have been upside down with the ground on the top. To me, it always looks wrong unless the ground is on the bottom. Like this: 😮 😮
The biggest issue with angle plugs is that they can cover other outlets, so you can really only use them on the bottom outlet (unless they really changed the design and standardized it)
Unless you have outlets like my house does. The plugs are rotated 90 degrees from what most outlets have (i.e. the plugs are sideways while the entire outlet is vertical).
@@mrb692 Yes, I have some extension cords with both two and three-prong variants of these 45-degree angle plugs and I LOVE them. Both safer and more stylish. Also I have some Belkin power strips with right-angle plugs that rotate. I would 110% recommend picking up whatever you can with these styles of plugs, and I have not had clearance issues with them, even plugged into other power strips.
They are fairly uncommon, so unlikely that you would have two needing the same outlet. So, always use the bottom outlet, to leave the top usable for straight cords. What I hate are large adapters with two prongs. I have an electronic piano with a large adapter and a sound module, also with a large adapter. I can plug the top one upside down and it mostly stays in place. But a power bar on the floor with wide spacing for adapters is the best solution. 😮😮
my grandfather's a retired electrician (worked maintenance in an industrial plant) and so far as I can tell, the two principles he brings to every project are 1. you can never have enough outlets. the correct number of outlets is one within reach at all times. and 2. outlets should be installed ground plug on top. this latter drives my grandmother nuts, because all her decorative nightlights are upside down. but I think this is balanced out by his cord management of her *extensive* xmas decorations. for example, she has "candles" to go in all the windows, and he has altered the cords so they are exactly the right length and not an inch longer. each light is labeled with which window it sits in and which outlet it plugs into. impeccable. this was a really interesting breakdown, thanks for sharing it with us!
I remember this was a (relatively) big thing around 2015. A new university dormitory even installed all outlets in this "upside down" direction. But I've since noticed that new construction puts them up the traditional way again.
There is one good use case for installing receptacles with the ground pin up. The bed rooms of most modern homes have one receptacle powered through to a wall switch. I always install that plug "upside down" to make it clear that is is different from the rest.
I've actually heard several electricians make this claim as well. I had always thought it was a building code standard and never bothered to question it, and have always done this with outlets I install myself. Ground plug at the top = controlled by a switch somewhere.
That's arbitrary. You could achieve the same thing by using contrasting-color outlets, or just having some shape/texture element to the specific plug that is switched (and it's usually only one of the two, not both, and never consistently top or bottom)... In fact, I'd say using color (black for switched) and textured (knurled for switched) would be optimal: super obvious for most people with a glance, but still as ADA-friendly as asking a blind person to rub their hand against the outlet to figure out where the ground is). Also, in a perfect world, having a locking toggle on the outlet itself would be nice to turn this feature on/off - yes, that would cost a bit more, but those stupid plastic switch locks just look ridiculous.
The Chinese outlet is the same as the AU/NZ outlet, but upside-down. They say it’s to prevent fire-causing shorts if something conductive falls between the top two pins, but here in AU/NZ we just have insulation halfway down the plug pins. Which is safer for finger-based reasons too.
Thanks for that info. Plus a reminder to folks that the Standard (240 volt single phase) Australian/New Zealand style outlets, are also used across a substantial amount of South Pacific Islands (largely because the, um, social and business intercourse, with Aust/NZ, being dominant in the region). So The Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. Plus I would guess Tokelau, Niue and Nauru. Not sure about Kiribati and Tuvalu, but as they were previously The Gilbert and Ellice Islands, they used Australian dollars and were serviced from Australia, then, so likely carried over electric standards also.
Older plugs have all-metal blades. Then you had the time when they changed the standard to require a recessed outlet, but Australian manufacturers couldn’t be arsed changing their products and forced that back out of the standard. Later it got changed again, and now some items such as extension leads and some power boards have the recessed design.
@@boggisthecat Insulated pins came in 2005. The attempt at recessed sockets was initially a failure because of the multitude of things like plugpack transformers which wouldn't fit, although they are now designed for recessed sockets. One would see the shielded part of an extension cord socket cut off in order to fit certain plugs.
@@cool386vintagetechnology6 Earlier than that. I used to work for the lab that PDL owned. Pretty sure those were put out around 1998 or so. The standard may have given 2005 as the phase out for unsheathed pins.
I left mine in the face orientation (largely because I have a few things that have a specific orientation like mentioned), but this is making me very glad I changed all the plugs and plates to plastic. I kept one metal light switch plate, but the outlets were a bit mismatched and very old, so I replaced them. Especially where I do use some older appliances (mainly a 1975 sewing machine, and some similarly aged lamps), safety was a concern. I gotta say, I am impressed with some power bars now where they have a thin plastic layer that rotates on top to block access when not in use. I have a couple of those and they also seem to really grab onto the plug in a way that outlets would just let slide, making it much harder to accidentally unplug things. That being said, my biggest complaint is with phone chargers. Most AC adapters that allow a USB to plug into a wall are just a box with two prongs out the back. They're pretty clunky and very easy to unplug (looking at Samsung's 45W one in particular, as well as MacBook/iPad chargers without the long cable attachment). Thankfully nothing bad happened, and I still have my 3 prong long Mac cable from when they used to be included, but I'd still say the $25 is worth it for the safety even if someone doesn't need the length. However, one good thing with the modern style of outlets I used in my place, is that they're the ones that don't have that separation in the middle. So it's a rectangle with both in it, and the plate uses a screw at the top, and one at the bottom. Since I'm not trained in electrical stuff, I just went around the house putting the plates on and they're much more sturdy with that second screw.
Odd anecdote regarding the receptacle safety covers for kids. My then 1-year old daughter found one we had removed to plug something in temporarily, and put it in her mouth. It went back into her throat, and cut off her air. She made zero noise and just stood in shock. Gladly I was watching from nearby and ran up, stuck my fingers in and managed to yank it out. Sometimes safety gear has its own hazards; that woke me up.
We had to install the slide-shut receptacle covers because our first kid sought out outlets in use and easily gained access by yanking on the cord of whatever was plugged in.
There was actually a deal with those in the UK where the pin that went in the ground could break off and hold the shutters on the live and neutral open, making the sockets more dangerous rather than less (the UK ones sockets being safe in the first place anyway).
I absolutely love the Breville appliance plugs. They have a hole in them for your finger to easily remove it from the wall, without having to yank on the plug cord or dig your fingernails between it and the wall to pull them out. They are hardily made and, in my opinion, should be the norm. Awesome episode as always, sir.
7:10 This actually happened at my place about a year ago: we had an extension cord behind my mom's dresser that ran to some Christmas lights in the hall. One night one of her bracelets (a thin metal chain) fell off the back of the dress and shorted it out... needless to say that it made quite a spark show: also ended up partly melting the bracelet to the plug as well.
@@edrose5045 People that have had issues with electrical safety are more likely to watch a video on electrical safety and comment on their issue, vs a large amount of people that have not had these issues, more at 10. Edit: That being said, you shouldn't ignore electrical safety necessarily because a particular event is unlikely. "No matter how safe you are, accidents will happen", therefore it's best to be prepared in the event of one beforehand. Do a cost vs benefits analysis at your discretion.
I also managed to do this as a kid by pushing a paperclip off the back of my desk which fell onto a plug which wasn't all the way into the receptacle. Shorted out, big soot mark on the wall. But it was a two prong lamp cord so it would have happened either way.
Great job! This is the most comprehensive video I've seen about this topic. However, it didn't address code making, product manufacturing, or standards committees influence on these questions. All of these products are also subject to manufacturing process limitations. And the astronomical costs of making even small changes to these designs. The best idea may be to provide GFCI protection for every receptacle circuit. And the NEC has done a lot toward making that happen.
In the UK we have multiple levels of protection, from fuses within the plug to RCD and MCD breakers in the consumer unit. Even with the breaker off you can still trip the unit by touching neutral to earth on the circuit you are trying to extend (by way of a fused connector, of course).
Our house was built in 1957 and at the time grounded outlets were relatively new in residential construction. Every single outlet in the house was installed with the ground on top. I found it pretty frustrating when plugging in appliances (that frequently have "low profile" plugs with the ground pin on the bottom) and wall transformers for electronics that would not stay in place with the weight on top. I ended up re-orienting almost all of them to have the ground on the bottom over the course of several years.
My home was built in '63, was no rhyme or reason to the up down orientation of the outlets. My microwave has a right angle 3 prong plug, my microwave sits on a shelf between the cabinets above my oven, the outlet it plugs into is about 2 feet lower and off to the side, I flipped that outlet ground side up so I could hang the cord downwards and tuck the cord up nicely without needing a big loop of cord flopping down below the outlet to plug the microwave in. On the flip side my washing machine also has a right angle 3 prong plug, the outlet for it in my basement sits about 5 feet up the wall and was flipped ground side up when I moved in, so I flipped that one ground side down so the cord could plug in and hang down normally. Then there's the basement outlet that my sump pump plugs into. That one they ran metal conduit along the exposed brick foundation wall to a metal junction box that is turned sideways...
@@_Frank_the_Tankin a lot of older homes, you have outlets that were added over time and they would be added using the style normal for that area at that time and/or with that one individual who did the installation. Worrying about them being consistent wasn't really a factor in most homes.
Here in Brasil, we changed our plugs from the US standard to a new national standard just over a decade ago. At first it was awful for compatibility, but it was definitely a change for the best. Probably the best feature is an hexagonal inset on the receiver, which not only is the bestagon, but also solves the issues with partial contacts.
The Brazil type is based on a International Electrotechnical Commission standard IEC 60906-1 that should've adopted aroud the world but we know that is hard to do, only Brazil and South Africa adopted the standard, until now
@@AndersondaRosaSLi find it so weird that Switzerland adopted a system so similar but incompatible. It's a nice system though, with 10 and 16 amp single and three phase plugs and sockets and backwards compatibility
I have a question about Brasil: how do you distinguish 127 and 220 V sockets? They are the same and you have to check in which area you are or you risk blowing your appliances?
Thank you for A.) making videos that are so compelling and thorough that I can't help but change my mind, and 2.) listing multifaceted reasons in a way that rewards close listening.
@@personaslates They should be looking shocked, because in the last moment before they became inanimate, they got a brief look at the American plug standards...
Honestly, looking at the plug designs, sideways right angle plugs like the replacement lamp cord you showed need to become a standard. The worst part about right angle plugs right now is that you can only really use 1 per outlet, since the part hanging down ends up covering the other plug or making it impossible to install in the top recepticle. Putting it at a right angle not only makes it fine in BOTH orientations, but makes it so you can use more than one per plug. I don't know why this isn't everywhere.
Me and my siblings never did play throw the knife at the wall, but we did play throw the penny at the outlet! We blew through a few fuses over a few months before our parents caught on with the repeated fuse blowing and scorch marks on the wall. Never did claim we were a bright bunch!
I agree. The best solution without changing our plug design or building thicker walls for inset outlets is the 90-degree plug. Only one problem, which you _sorta_ addressed: Interference with other plugs. But there's an even better solution, both in specific and overall when 2 ideas are combined together. And that's to have the ground holes face away from each other, and simultaneously to make it standard for all outlets to be mounted sideways, Chicago style. Now you can ALWAYS get TWO 90-degree plugs or large bulky power adapters in each outlet, AND the combined sideways design and flat plugs will prevent them from pulling to expose the prongs. The ONLY way to mess this up (or indeed make the entire situation worse than it is in general) would be to make the ground holes face TOWARD each other. THAT failure would indeed make it entirely impossible to use the other socket with a 90-degree plug or a bulky power adapter. The only thing I could see being worse would be plug in air freshener pods. Those would have to be redesigned to all be reorientable. Or, much like that splitter you showed, there would have to be another product on the market that would adapt the outlet rotation 90-degrees so that the ground hole can face down and allow the air freshener to work normally.
17:09 - just now realising that those safety cover thingies make a TON of sense in the US. Around here in the UK they get referred to as "socket openers" because the act of placing a bendy plastic thing in a wall outlet which already had a MECHANICAL SHUTTER PROTECTING THE LIVE PINS when empty demonstrably makes shocks more likely, not less
@@ericdoesstuff7568my apartment has one receptacle that is tamper-resistant. It's also plug-resistant. It's smack dab in the middle of the apartment in the island so I like to use it for my vacuum, but it's a fight to get the plug in every single time.
I live in a very old rental home (literally built before the USA was the USA, although the electrical was obviously installed later). A number of the outlets don't work at all and, with some others, only the top or bottom works, and I can never remember which one. After several years of always plugging my rice cooker or air popper into the wrong one first, I installed the plastic child safety doo-dads on the non-working ones.
8:40 This actually happen to me once. The plate was metal and wasn't secure by a screw, it just snapped in place. I don't recall exactly what happened, but I somehow dislodged the plate and it fell on the two prongs. It left a really ugly mark on the outlet and I had to replace the whole thing.
Ground up definitely makes sense for hospitals and workshops where 20amp circuits and standard 3 prongs are the norm. Infact, if the code was updated for 15 amps face side 20 amps inverted that would be great.
that's been standard convention for the last 60 years without need of a code to enforce it. today people are just dumb and don't know why some plugs were installed upside down.
If there are two outlets, why not just make the top one “upside-down” (ground pin at the top) and keep the other one “frowning face”? That way, you can get the benefits of the ground-pin-at-the-top outlet for one plug, and be able to use right-angle plugs in the other outlet. This might not be ideal for when you have two devices of the same type next to each other, but it’s still a plus. All the dual outlets in my flat (in Poland, so using the French standard with the ground pin sticking out of the outlet) do it this way, even though I’m pretty sure that having the ground pin at the top is the standard (all the single outlets have it there). This arrangement with inverted ground pins also lets me use two right-angle-plug devices in one outlet for more flexibility.
This is not a bad idea at all! Although, one thing I do really appreciate about the sideways outlet convention near Chicago is that we don't have cords falling on top of one another. Perhaps we've been doing it right all along...
I was going to comment about the increased manufacturing cost of this approach limiting the commercial viability given that outlets are a commodity product but then I realized I would absolutely pay extra for this. It would be so nice to be able to plug two power adapters into a single receptacle without requiring an extension cord. I'd also be down for receptacles mounted sideways with the ground down on both - the cable management with right angle plugs would be perfect.
@@alc5440 When my first (and only) child came around and I was redoing one of the rooms as his bedroom (and our bedroom at the same time) they had those plugs with the plastic shutters over them and while I'm not sure if they are code or not (I thought I read something that they were) I very happily bought them for all the outlets even though they cost significantly more than the standard plug. Now I can have peace of mind that a random toy probably isn't going to wedge itself in the hot outlet of an unused plug.
@@alc5440 I assume the intent would be to make it a standard going forward, so the manufacturing cost would be offset by the number sold. And, honestly, we produce enough variants as-is that it likely wouldn't be that much more expensive.
While I agree with you wholeheartedly, Dan's Pro Shop did a short on outlet orientation. He makes the point that, in a machine shop with metal filings and shavings and all sorts of crap flying all over, the odds of someone accidentally wining a game of "throw the knives at the wall" with a foreign object go WAY up. Obviously far less likely in the home environment, but still interesting to keep in mind. Might be worth flipping your weird sideways outlets to have the neutral on top, if its in that kind of setting. Great video, as always!
Anyone can find a corner case and say "but what IF...", but usually if there's a use-case that has shown an elevated risk, the NEC or OSHA will directly address it. Industrial and jobsite electrical fires most frequently involve damaged cord-and-plug sets and defective tools.
I've actually seen this happen before. The most common way of cleaning off machines is with an air gun, and chips will fly onto the floor and then later swept up. Someone at my work did trip a breaker from this.
@@MorbidEel some companies make those now, however they're not required and unless it happens no one is going to even think about that. What we did at my work was buy extension cords with those little tabs that you can put a screw through so you just screw it in after plugging it in
The worst aspect of our plugs is when you have sideways sockets under an overhang (eg recessed under the shelf in a bedside stand) and you can't see down to where the plug is. You naturally want to reach out with you fingertips to feel where the holes are and guide it in. Somehow, it's been several months since we got these bed stands with under shelf sockets from Amazon so I think I've got the urge controlled by now but it's kinda surprising I didn't get shocked.
@@grn1 Yes, ofc but if you don't feel both at the same time you've lost that position when u go to put the plug in after checking. You might know the orientation but try plugging something in with your eyes closed in a sideways socket and you'll see what I mean.
I swear you have made videos on the most fascinatingly mundane things, and I love almost every one of them that I've come across and not searched for them once. It's often a delight.
As a home remodeler running my own business, you did a absolutely excellent job on this! Even soon covering the tamper-proof receptacles next is a plus. Please try to find ones that are not junk.l, I haven't. Homeowners have me change them out all the time. They break easily to. Also look into the lobbying that happened to get these into the code books. Apparently it has more to do with charging more money then actual real world safety conditions... but we'll see. Looking forward to this vid.
I just did a whole host of outlet replacements. The Cooper TR outlets I put in seem to be pretty solid currently, dunno how long they will last (the old Leviton 30-year-old outlets were so worn it was a hazard)
I've liked Leviton TBR15 for my home. It's a step up in price going from residential grade to specification commercial grade so good luck convincing clients to pay for an upgrade that isn't cosmetic. If you can do it the tamper mechanism has been solid for 4 years for me.
You could always buy the premuim or commercial outlets instead of the economy. I have never had them break and not sure what those people are doing to destroy those, but they may be the cheap ones made with cheaper plastics and metal seated solidly in their place.
In Brazil, we use type N. The wall connection is deep in the receptacle and the live plugs have a plastic padding. So it's virtually impossible for a live plug to become exposed (while connected).
Brazil made a mistake when switching to Type N for everything. They should have used Type N for 127V outlets and Type G for 220V outlets so it's impossible to plug a device into an outlet of the wrong voltage. I know they're supposed to be marked, but that seems like a half measure. Do you know why Brazil has two different standard voltage and why they never standardized on only one? Here in the US we have both 120V and 240V, but 240V is only for appliances drawing large amounts of power like an electric oven or clothes dryer, and they have plugs which are different from the standard 120V outlet.
@@LoveClassicMusic0205Voltage in Brazil is regional. Half of the country (including here where I live) is only 220V, so changing the plug or not doesn't matter. In places where it is 110V, only some parts of the house (usually the kitchen) are 220V, while the rest is 110V. Furthermore, apart from a few small things, everything else is bivolt, so the voltage difference doesn't really matter. As for the question of why, the answer is historical: at the time they went to install these distribution networks, they hired companies from several countries. Those from North America (in general) went to the south and companies from Europe (also in general) went to the north
@@LoveClassicMusic0205 perhaps, but we have two types of plugs (one more thick than the other), we could have used those and use color coded outlets as well. As why we have both 120/240v, I believe it’s related to the grid. Some cities in my current State are fully 240, while others are 120v (but in those cities, you still see 240v things like AC, Ovens, Driers, etc.)
I find it amusingly fitting that you outlined the exact set of situations that actually led to a scorched outlet face in my house. My stepdad wanted to prove me wrong about the outlet spacing in our basement and used a tape measure, floating it along the wall rather than along the floor. And one outlet happened to have a two-prong wall wart for a cordless phone charger that had been dislodged at some point. The tape bounced a couple times before connecting firmly and with an arc and bang tripped the breaker. He was fine, though rather spooked in his quest to try and prove me wrong. As well as the incident leaving scorch marks on the outlet and three pairs of notches in the tape measure. Years later I still have that whole set to show that it can happen, but indeed I don't worry about the orientation because the situation was so specific in the setup. In fact when I put in the new one the replacement is oriented the same way as the previous one. It just hasn't been a major concern for me in the many years that I've been dealing with electrical.
I lived for three years in a house with ground-up outlets (I'm not sure if original 1960 or a remodel possibly in the 1980s) and all of the annoyances listed are extremely real. I did become an afficionado of *rotating* 45 degree flat plug power strips!
You did touch on the one problem that right-angle plugs have: the general inability to use two of them in one duplex receptacle. Power strips that have the grounds down the middle of the strip have their ability to handle several cords hamstrung to only one or two by right-angle plugs (which is why I look for power strips that have the grounds along a side, so right-angle plugs - and power bricks - stick off the side of the strip.) Having the cord exit on the 45 degree helps quite a bit, though it isn’t feasible for every use.
Some power strips mitigate this by putting the sockets at a 45 degree angle. At least here in Schuko country, maybe there's a reason you can't do that with NA sockets.
We *could* solve that in the future by turning the orientation of the outlets 90 degrees and installing so they're side by side. Not saying we *should* do that though.
Electrician here. I have not once encountered any issues having facing them either "up" or "down" so far in my career. 99% of the time we install them with the ground closest to the floor. We sometimes flip the entire outlet (so the ground pin is closest to the ceiling), in order to easily differentiate half hots from normal outlets (half hots being one half of a given outlet being powered by a switch, while the other half always gets power). Makes it easy to explain to homeowners over the phone, and easy for everybody to remember. Also I recently installed those Adorn outlets (as well as switches, fan timers, dimmers, etc) for the first time, they are pretty neat. The pop-up outlets are especially fun to just press in and out lol Edit, side note: the vast majority of dryers we see have right angle plugs, with the grounds being the top. We always have the ground of our dryer outlets facing the ceiling unless told otherwise. Definitely a mute point though, as you're not plugging in and out dryers constantly.
In some homes I've been in northeast Ohio, the outlets that are "upside down" were the ones that were switched. I think this may have been a local phenomenon brought on by the upgrade to grounded outlets in some older homes (where having a lamp outlet on a switch instead of a fixture was common). In these homes, I would find all but one outlet was "shocked face" oriented so you knew something was different about the outlet. Usually, this was something that was noticed only after something was plugged in and then discovered to be switched via light switches often across the room.
Most homes I've lived in around central Ohio have all the plugs the same direction. My current home all of the plugs are "upside down", except a couple that have been replaced. One previous home had all of the plugs on GFI circuits upside down. It really just seems based on the builder's whim.
I've lived in several houses in Northern California which use that convention too. It's a bit annoying for all the reasons Alec mentioned here - especially because in many cases, only *one* of the outlets in the receptacle is actually switched. They should do something like use a different color receptacle instead; then they could even have only the switched outlet be different.
I’ve seen switched upside down in a few places I have been at in southern California as well. I like the convention, but personally I go around a stick a colored dot sticker on the plate next to any switched outlet in places I move into.
It's common across the country. Every place I've lived identifies the switched outlet by having the ground up. You would also be surprised by the amount of people who think they have ghost switches that do absolutely nothing. A typical duplex outlet can also be set up with one hole hot all of the time, and the other hole switched. There's a plate on the terminals that can seperate the two outlets.
You are one of my favorite creators. It never ceases to amaze me how a channel about these kind of things sounds super niche but you still managed to grow it to over 2M subscribers. That's a testament to your skill as a content creator.
This whole anti-US-plug pedantry is silly. There is nothing inherently bad about US plug design. The guy complaining about the plug literally runs his own wires from the breaker panel in his house. It's dumb. It's pedantry. But most of all, it's jealousy of the EU nanny state. The last person I would ever want to see working in any bureaucracy is Alex.
@@christo9301. what does this comment have to do with what you're saying. 2. If you don't like him, don't watch him. 3. Why no have safer standards if we can.
He's a genuinely good content creator and the best part is that he doesn't add bloat to his videos like many others do, he's straight to the point and the few jokes he makes are witty instead of forced or cringy.
This is probably something you thought of, but if you mentioned I missed it: Right angle plugs facing straight down are alright when you only have one of them, just put it on the bottom. But what happens when you have two plugs with all that added bulk demanding space parallel to the line of sockets, and you need/want them plugged in near each other? And when you have to concede to pull out a power strip to solve the issue, all bets are off for tripping hazards. This might be a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of things, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of product designers out there saw that choice between 'make our product slightly less of a tripping hazard' and 'make our product universally easy to plug into any outlet space' and went with the simpler crowd-pleasing option.
avoiding conflicts like that is the point in 45 degree plugs (almost always down-right), and one of the advantages of the 'straight out the back' type (countered by all the down sides of 'straight out the back' if your plug design is bad). Actually, one thing I've noticed a lot where I live (not the USA), is that Multiboxes (powerstrips, I guess) tend to have 45 degree plugs, but the sort of things that fully expect they're going to be plugged Into a multibox tend to have 'straight out the back' plugs... and then there's the never to be sufficiently damnned wall warts. Bad enough when they all point Down (introducing the levering problem even in plugs that wouldn't have it otherwise), but then some genius started making multiboxes with two rows of plugs facing opposite ways to accomodate them... and after getting one I encountered, for the first time ever, a wall wart where the cable came out the TOP! Which, naturally, couldn't go in ANY of the sockets on that multibox. Though more recently I bought a multibox with... 10 sockets? 12? it deals with this by having some of the sockets further apart to accomodate wide wall warts, and as a result the sockets on one side are Not in line with the sockets on the other side (and they also have the two sides facing opposite ways), so there's always at least a couple of sockets that are viable for any given stupid non-standard plug. So long as you don't have too many that are non-standard in the same fashion.
and that's why in germany we use plug type F or also called Schuko. it can never be touched when it is plugged in and you can also plug it in the other way round.
It's possible to make plugs and outlets much better with just a few simple steps (some of which you already mentioned): 1) Yes, mount them Chicago-style (landscape) - but rotate each outlet, ideally so the ground pin is upwards. 2) Have the cord come out of the bottom of the plug (furthest away from the ground pin). That way, the cords never tangle & don't pull out under their own weight. 3) Make the ground pin a bit longer than the live/neutral pins, and partially sleeve the live/neutral. Optionally add a "shutter" to close off the live/neutral if there's no ground pin. 4) Make the pins way bigger, and rectangular 5) Add switches. 6) Oh, er, sorry, I seem to have been describing a British double socket 😆
You forgot Add a fuse to each plug. But I do agree with 2,3 and 5. And you can already find tamper-resistant outlets with shutters at your local hardware store. These don't rely on the ground plug and instead require live and neutral to be inserted at the same time.
never understood the switches. if they accidentally get bumped at the same time as something comes to short it doesnt matter how many switches you got.
I'm a big fan of 90° plugs also because I often have furniture in front, and it both lets the furniture fit closer to the wall and prevents it from bending the plug out if it moves (such as a bed on a hard floor when people get in too quickly).
Given all options, safest orientation is on it's side with the ground on the left. Also never in my life was I concerned that I was going to be touching the prongs while plugging it into an outlet
Window blinds with metal ball chain draw mechanisms were the first time I saw an issue with foreign objects slipping between plug and socket. Having seen the resultant fireworks, I now appreciate the proximal insulation on live and neutral in Australian plugs.
🙃
Yes
😮
Ugh. I can't watch this right now. There is nothing in code. Arguments for both orientations. People have specifically asked nec for a policy and they have outright refused.
🙂🙃🙂🙃🙂😉
The right angle plug on my AC is upside down, debating rotating the outlet so the cable doesnt go straight up, but I rent. Could my landlord get mad at me for such a simple procedure? I have access to the breakers so there isnt an access issue.
It was legit shocking to hear "I DON'T CARE" from the man who made videos about the colour of turn signals, the perfect warm Christmas lights, did a deep dive on different lantern technologies...
I just didn't know Alec had it in him!
You must not drive or have never driven without Amber indicator lights/turn signals..
He's 100% right about turn signal color. If anything, he's too calm about it.
Or the video complaining that he can't get turn signals to sync up on old cars.
He really shattered my expectations this time
I do fuckin hate those brake light coloured indicators on American cars 😅 so annoying.
As a former " throw the knives at the wall" champion, I am absolutely shocked at how the world has taken the sport over the past few years.
Pun intended!
champion where exactly? I went to state and didnt see ya? i went to the nationals and you werent there? i was throwing knives at walls in effin luxembourg and were you around? nope. I CALL BS. BOO THIS FRAUD.
i might be thinking of volleyball....but just in case BOO HIM ANYWAY
@@OsX86H3AvYI saw him at the nationals, when he made that final throw the atmosphere was electric
And as a compulsive yardstick-wall-rester, i'm terrified nobody knows the technical term for it is "Mustardcatching"
rewind for your pleasure @7:42
What I took away from this is the correct, best orientation is "Sideways, with ground plugs on opposite sides from each other so two right angle plugs can be used together" and I'm all for this idea personally.
Why opposite sides? Why not just upright(ground pin down) but side by side, like 2 faces next to each other?
@josiahferrell5022 that would work too, though I'm not sure which would be harder to wire up. Iirc the wires plug into the sides of the sockets, and by having then next to each other you run the risk of a short or having electricity arc. If they're just flipped from each other the wires wouldn't be closer than if they both faced the same way.
Some right angle plugs are now being designed with a 45* orientation to the vertical of 'stacked' outlets. I like these.
Sort of reminds me of the 'specialty' housings I've seen in places like professional kitchens & chemistry labs which are intended to be installed "sideways" - so the plugs are side-by-side instead of over-under, but oriented upright.
This is what we need!
The thing that annoys me about the ones in my house installed "properly" is that all of the decorative night lights I have end up being upside down because of that prong that's larger. My hair dryer and several other things end up having to be plugged in upside down with the cord coming off the top rather than the bottom. I'm having all my outlets changed to the "face" orientation so they work with my appliances and night lights.
You can probably do it yourself just make sure the power is off. You just need a screw driver
most night lights have a little screw in them to flip them without having to turn the outlet upside down, just loosen it, turn it right side up, then re-tighten the night light. Thats what i do with mine. I hope this helps
🚓🚓🚓
The bubbling Christmas night light just won't work upside down
After I bought my house I noticed that all the outlets were installed ground up. I said "no way" and spent an afternoon flipping them all the "Right way" with ground down "O Face". That's the way it's supposed to be in my opinion. I've only started seeing "ground up" outlets in the last few years. I don't like it. Sorry.
15:12 Not only does the 45° angle mean you can put two plugs in adjacent sockets in an outlet, it also works if those two sockets are side-by-side instead of stacked! I really wish more plugs came like this; it makes things so much tidier.
Me too, I really appreciate a 45 degree angle plug. I can move my furniture closer to the wall without having to worry about smashing a cable and starting a fire. It should be the default plug style without question.
Side by side is pretty much all you see in the uk due to the nature of the cable coming from the plugs extending below them.
or buy 45° degree angle outlets. So you don't need to care so much about who manufactures the cord.
Here in schuko-land it's common for power strips to have 45° angles for their sockets so you can use 4-8 right angle plugs without interference. Wall sockets are usually vertical, unlike the UK with their giant fuse box/plug hybrids, but it's less of an issue since neither socket or plug has an up or down orientation and the plugs are much more securely held than the US ones (sockets that actually use the retaining bar holes excepted, not that I ever encountered one when I lived in California).
But then it's annoying to use when the cord points away from where you want it to go.
The slight gain in safety is not worth the lost sanity of looking at an upside down outlet.
My entire house was wired that way, and look at me 🙃.
@@WilburJaywright must live in Australia
It must look like a face
That is how they're set up in American hospitals. It's part of the safety standard. What we're used to is upside down I think.
@@John-yh5gmexactly
Electronic engineer here, 50 years experience. This is an excellent video and explains a number of questions I've had about why plug designs are as they are. Suggestion: clarify what shocks are uncomfortable vs. those that could be life-threatening. If a momentary shock is across one finger or between two fingers on the same hand, it's educational. If it's between two hands and so passes through the chest, that could be a more terminal education.
I'm stealing the term "terminal education" 😂😂😂
I was told that the ground prong should be on the bottom because when the plug tilted down the ground would still be fully in, preventing shock. Is that correct?
@@nancylindsay4255 ground pins don't prevent shock. They only trip the breaker when the shock does occur.
@@nancylindsay4255 A common misconception is that the ground prevents shock, it's more of a "signal wire" that detects potential to ground. Let's say your toaster is damaged, the metal body shouldn't become electrified because it's grounded. So if you plug it in the breaker should trip.
My impression is that the ground pin is typically grounds the metal chassis. So, if there is a short, it has a lower resistance connection to ground vs., for example, a human body touching the outside of the metal toaster.
This has the effect of tripping the breaker, only because the lower resistance connection to ground causes the amperage draw to go beyond the rating of the breaker... however, the idea of the separate ground is to given the AC power lower resistance path to ground than the human body.
I almost spit my tea across the room when you said "Outside of Boston, most people don't play 'throw the knives at the wall.'" lolz
Yeah I didn't realize that was just a Boston thing either lol
Tea? In Boston? Sounds like a party
As a remodeling contractor, I can confirm that the tape-measure scenario is a.) real, and b.) will scare the pants off you. 😅 I almost welded my tape to an uncovered live outlet once, and it still has a sharp notch in the blade that I have to watch out for.
This was my introduction to this issue as well. Scared the heck out of me at the time.
Is it worth covering the notch with packing tape?
Yes, but with changes to circuit breaker design, is that even a problem that's going to exist in 50 years? Even today, I don't see this being a particularly common problem to have. Between the GFCI and AFCI being mandated, Fresh Princing the outlet doesn't really do anything that the advanced features don't do better. Then there's AFCI that's likely to be incorporated in every single circuit at some point, rather than just the relatively long list of rooms that it's currently required for.
You'd likely get far more safety out of making it easier to replace loose outlets that can't retain the items plugged into them any more than flipping them upside down.
Did it myself several years back. To this day I've got to fiddle with that tape to get it to fully retract.
Most circuit breakers take a couple milliseconds to open, enough time for nasty sparks and welding if it's a dead short. Most electricity related injuries are caused by secondary events, like falling off the ladder when instinctively retreating from the loud bang.
For an Austrian engineer like me, your wall socket videos are always so entertaining!
I constantly go back and forward from "wow, how crappy and dangerous are these" to "well, it´s only a 110 volts" :D
For an American like me, I'm just happy to know that your country doesn't have kangaroos and Foster's beer.
Man, my countrymen suck at geography. :)
Bitte habt ein tolles Oktoberfest
Ha! As an American electric consumer I do the same! (dangerous/only 110v) 😆
@@migueldelmazo5244 I actually read it as Australian and got confused
Exacly this but in europe. Only 110v
I couldn't care less, I live in Europe.
I’m an electrician of many years exp (I’m lvl 47) and I must tell you, I have never even meet anyone who has been troubled by the very singular and specific safety scenarios in your vid. And you’re quite right about the NEC; even article 517 only goes as far as tamper resistance in pediatric facilities.
Throw knives at the wall does sound enticing though.
The CEC now requires TR for all buildings of residential occupancy, because children often live in homes.
The whole thing is an issue made up by some idiot who probably gets paid to make up nonexistent problems. In fact, the whole tamper resistant requirement is another non-issue probably legislated by someone who takes money from a company that would make a lot of money by forcing everyone to replace all their outlets. Even GFCI is a solution for a problem most people don't have. In my 50+ years on this planet, I have never had and never known anyone who would have benefited from any of these now mandated devices.
@@maxwelllewis4486 Not in my house they don't.
Nec 406 5 G
Electrician here. There are a few receptacles around houses that get installed ground up as standard in my company. Ill usually set receptacles ground up under sinks for disposals whips. They factory installed whips tend to be right-angled plugs and interfere with available storage. Ill also set them ground up behind gas ovens that have igniters and clocks. People like to hang things behind and set things on the valve plate. If somebody misses the hook when they hang a metal spatula and drop it on the plug behind the oven, it keeps it from shorting. Same goes for washers and dryers and any other kind of slide-in/foot-mounted appliances. Basically if the environment would funnel flat things to the recept, I'll set them ground up.
But engineers at the yacht company I used to work for disagree. Plugs tend to fall out of your "proper" orientation more than the correct way. Also, plugs tend to break out the plastic above the ground hole in a working environment. I was an inspector of finished yachts and wrote them up countless times for the plugs being upside down or the ground hole being broken out.
I'd been trained in Navy electricity/ electronics that having prongs up lets person see where NOT to touch, as the video shows.
One has to hope the ground up plug was placed in a good spot as many stoves have limited area behind them for plug room, mainly at just the very bottom near the floor.. A mis-placed outlet means the stove will have to be 4 or 5 inches away from the wall, thus sticking out from counters etc. Not really feasible for most.
crappy electrical company across town: WRITE THIS DOWN WRITE THIS DOWN!
sounds like it should usually be "ground towards where the outlet's electricity is going to go", since right-angle plugs tend to also be "ground towards the device", so when the outlet's directly underneath the sink machinery, makes sense to install it "ground up"
Electrician here- The Code called for ground up in commercial applications for a very short time, but now officially either orientation is considered correct. Some old fogeys are very, very particular about it, no one else cares.
Edit: also, aside from someone standing barefoot on a grounded steel floor while getting sprayed down with saltwater, many casual contacts with a piece of metal that happens to touch the live pin result in nothing happening unless you bridge the metal to a grounded surface and make a spark and pop a breaker.
The quirk with hospitals, best I can tell, is the call for “hospital-grade” outlets in certain spaces and those marketed as ground up.
What I was told by facilities is that it’s to comply with preventing loose cords in patient areas but like you said; old fogeys.
I’ve stared at them ground up for so long that’s just “normal” for me.
Moreover.. in my entire life I've never known a single person who died from 120v to the finger from a wall receptacle, which would easily run into the thousands if every shock among us was counted collectively (everyone I know that is; not the 1-off weird ones you see in the news once a decade or so)
It's a blessing and a curse that you only have 120 V to these sockets. On one hand, it's not that harmful that you have unsafe sockets. On the other hand, surely you would have safer sockets by now. The change to safer sockets wasn't without its quirks in Europe either but it was well worth it.
@@jattikuukunen now that said I definitely wouldn't mind more 240v appliances around the house myself just for the bit of efficiency like elec kettle, hair dryers, space heater things like that, but I understand and I get it.. having decades and decades and decades of what we've got, it's absolutely unfeasible to even offer those especially since hardly anyone would install the special sockets, even some of the biggest window unit AC's you can buy now run on 15a 110v, they're good enough that no one really buys the 220v one anymore so you rarely see them in the big box stores. You won't even find 30a horizontal blade sockets (I forget what those were called) anywhere but old houses anymore
@@jattikuukunen Then there's also the Brazilian plug, which is a great design in therms of passive protection (the sleeved pins and recessed socket), but just cause they HAVE to screw things up in Brazil and milk us some extra, it's the exact same thing as the Swiss plug but with some small fraction of a millimeter higher or lower on the ground pin, just to be another plug type.
As an electrician, I was once in a situation where a co worker was filling a room with 150' of metal fish tape. It ended up spoiling over the very loose plug of a fan, and shot sparks all around the room. But of course, the cord wasn't grounded so it wouldn't have mattered, as you said.
I've done something similar. There was an extension cord on the ground near where I was feeding a fish tape. It was still in the conduit, and I felt it getting hot in my hands. The two pieces weren't fully connected. And it didn't damage the fish tape. I think it tripped the breaker, but not quickly.
When using cheap extension cords, the voltage drop is pretty high. High enough that it won't actually trip a breaker due to the high resistance and therefore low current. But, it'll still give you something to chew on if you touch the live bits.
Why did the room need to be filled with all that?
@@Kremithefrog1 Because plastic fish tape would have been too bulky.
@@IceBergGeoEven the cheapest extension cord wouldn't have a high enough resistance to avoid flipping a breaker when shorted. More likely that the fish tape only made contact with the hot pin and was also in contact with something grounded (like a conduit or pipe). Steel is a surprisingly lousy electrical conductor, so over a few meters it could definitely avoid immediately flipping the breaker while also getting really hot.
Probably looks cool as shit
This reminds me of my dorm room in college where a horizontal metal shelf hanger was installed right above an outlet. If my roommate and I weren't careful, the plug blades would short out on the support and trip the breaker for our side of the hall. Inevitably it happened one evening when one of our hallmates was typing up a paper he inexplicably hadn't saved in over an hour. We could hear him screaming two doors down.
From experience, I bet the paper turned out better the second time around anyway.
This is why I love Google Docs (perhaps there's something better, but.) It autosaves without needing to do anything. I don't have to give it a file name or save it to a location, it's just saved and so is the history. Cloud accessible, sharability, and it's free.
I've lost so many writings over the years, that I write my longer social media posts in it, too. Just not worth rolling a late-night sanity check when an app fumbles.
What was he typing his paper in? All of MS Word, LibreOffice Writer and Google Docs silently save every few keystrokes, and have done so for over a decade now. Word and LibreOffice save to recovery files and offer to restore them when you launch the program next, and Google Docs saves the document directly.
Lol. You just reminded me when I had something similar happen in my old dorm back 20 years ago (fuck it’s been that long). Our dorms electricity could barely handle a toaster let alone a microwave. The electricity was set up that a block, which is 6 dorms, all shared 1 circuit. And it was known that if you wanted to use a real microwave in your dorm and to a refrigerator microwave, you had to be sure no one else was using anything with a high draw. Enter finals week, which for my school meant coffee, coffee and more coffee, did I mention there was a lot of coffee. Almost every room had a coffee maker going because we had no place to buy a cup of coffee. 1 guy had brought in a smallish microwave. The stars aligned one night as his entire block had turned on their coffee makers and computers (desktops were very common then) and he turned on his microwave. 2 guys were working on their final papers and lost a lot of progress. The situation devolved and the guy with the microwave got hurt pretty bad.
@@rjgaynor8 oof.
I still have my dads old aluminum 4-foot ruler with two small bites taken out of the edge. They were caused when I was a tyke, it was leaned up against a wall, and my clumsy 6 year old self went flying by and knocked it over. It tipped and landed on a plug. It just happened to land behind its balance point, so it pivoted on the prongs. When it hit level, it shorted those prongs and POW!, vaporized those two little bites right off the edge. One in a zillion, but boy was it exciting! Literally a once-in-a-lifetime, so I'm still not flipping my outlets.
Type E, F and H plugs we have here and in Europe have recessed sockets so that even if slightly pulled out (which is also very unlikely due to other design decisions) nothing falling on them will be able to touch the live wire.
And most plugs are designed in a way which allows you to actually pull on them. They always have a grip part
@@sakurajin_noa In the UK, our plugs are way too bulky to wire them in any other way than the "norm" with the Earth pin at the top
That, and we don't care about kids getting their fingers in them because they simply wouldn't fit and if they DID fit somehow they'd meet a plastic shutter
True our type F or in German "schuko" is pretty nice and even really old tech. Seems like it's one of our better Exports to nearby country's :P
@@waqasahmed939 I mean we are talking about Europe here, not the UK
@@MegaPompoen Pretty sure the UK is in Europe
I worked maintenance in nursing homes for 28 years. I ran into this issue one year from the annual health and safety inspection. We were using beaded chain (the kind you see on a lot of ceiling fans) on our over bed lights. The inspector told me about a fire in some nursing home due to the chain falling back into the bent plug. We had to change all of them with nylon cord.
Yea that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Glad to here you guys took preventive measures to keep those older and or disabled family members safe. Thanks🙏 I have never paid attention wether the reading lamps at my mother’s assisted living apartment had metal chains. I’ll be sure to check when I visit tomorrow
Would it not be easier to change all outlets to safer ones ? If the building code , when lead (pipes, solder and flux) in public water systems was banned in 1986 In US , would have mandated better outlets and plugs , if building has renovation done, most of US homes would most likely have new outlets by now .
With water pipes you need to rip old systems out , with outlets its just to change it , cost is what those outlets cost , what is that $5 per outlet ?
We changed old two pin outlets to Euro plugs , ban came in 1997 here in Finland , starting with new buildings , now you should have even arc protection .
I still have in summer cottage , one old outlet , its nearly as dangerous than American , if you use 50 year old plugs , you do have outlet area a bit below surface .
As far as I know the rules about lead pipes allowed older installations to remain until they need replacement anyway, as the risk of lead contamination is negligible with normal running water flowing in the pipe, however a change to outlets and/or plugs would potentially require a wholesale replacement as compatibility would break (obviously adaptors could mitigate this and it would be fine but.. guess people aren't that creative?)
@@pete_lind It's a similar vein to the LED/Incandescent bulb fights... You gotta consider, not only just how incredibly BIG the U.S. really is... BUT also that the U.S. industrialized like NOBODY else in the world, and the shear numbers that encounters. It doesn't even matter any longer who does the actual physical manufacturing, either. The numbers that were once so ungodly above and beyond the facility or imaginings in the 1890's became the "default normal" by the 1920's... and by the 60's if you couldn't contribute a few million a year, you just couldn't be a manufacturer...
The side effect is warehouseS (cap-s for emphasis) completely stocked floors to ceilings with the old "dangerous" outlets. It's just how industry rolls in the U.S. and to fail to "get big or go home" is the obvious hindrance to competition.
There REALLY WERE warehouses of unused incandescent lights all over the country, and corporations that owned them threatened seriously with losing their figurative asses on the advancement of LED-lighting, so there will continue to be such arguments and fights for years to come, even if it seems relatively quietly going away... Same with the corporate blockade on updating anything in the electrical code elsewhere. It's gotten along fine with fairly seldom accidents and injuries over the bigger picture, so the U.S. business world is fine with letting Darwin sort out the end consumers.
It shouldn't surprise you that when the building codes and National standards outlawed lead in the U.S. rather than dig up and retrofit all the old pipes for new ones, they added phosphates to the water supply and left the existing infrastructure alone. LOTS of American cities and towns and yes, EVEN houses and apartment buildings still have lead fittings in their pipes from city mains all the way through... The lead crisis in Flint Michigan was down to the city council failing to add the phosphates when they decided to send their own pipes to the lake to get water, instead of paying the slightly higher price for the processing plants to continue supplying it. It's like that ALL OVER THE COUNTRY...
AND there are "Scenic Historical Districts" where Historical Societies and Associations have lobbied their way into local governance and you literally have to get permission from the city to replace things like the shingling on your roof or your rain guttering system, and they'll send you back a list of "appropriate products" to choose from when (and if) they even give you that permission... SO you can figure the odds of getting permission to gut a historical house out and retrofit the plumbing, because you'll get inspectors up your backside by the dozen... and pay them servicing fees ON TOP of the local taxes and the city's requisite considerations.
There's a dollar to be made, so you can bet your last ounce of dying breath they'll find a way to suck it out of you. ;o)
@@pete_lind I don’t know the details of the transition you mentioned. We’re the new outlets somehow backwards compatible with old plugs? Or was it a situation where everyone needed to pick up a ton of adapters to use old plugs in new outlets (and vice versa).
The thing with lead pipes is they never mandated old buildings to retrofit, they just required new installations to stop using lead. Most people would see no observable change from the regulation. Unless the old and new plugs are somehow compatible, then I would think the transition would require several years of irritation with adapters.
I honestly dont think most people here view the safety issues with the current outlets as being significant enough to warrant the inconvenience of fixing it.
I've actually had the "foreign objects" scenario come to pass -- a coin fell down behind a sideboard and shorted out the plug. Very startling when it went off.
That's your jeton moment.
For me is was a necklace that fell off the nightstand. Since it was flexible chain it would have shorted out in either orientation.
Me too!!! Wife's gold necklace fell off the dresser and had a 1/2 inch vaporized.
Same kinda thing happened to us. Was surely a shocking surprise.
Cookie sheet here.
I live in Chicago and when you mentioned the sideways outlets I spun around my room in disbelief to realize that all of them are indeed sideways and I never thought a thing of it. Thanks for heightening my awareness of my environment I suppose.
As a European (Dane, specifically), I am shocked at how easily North American plugs can become partially unseated. Relatedly, I would find it very interesting, if you would do a "compare and contrast" of other plug types from around the world, especially the Euro Schuko type F as well as the Danish type K. Also type C is extremely common.
Can't forget the Type G as well. It's basically everything he complained about, solved (sleeved, grounded, standardised right angle).
And, yes, I went to the states with a MacBook charger and it was an awful and dangerous experience. It literally fell out the wall and sparked.
But we all agree that type G is the best.
It's also a feature, hypothetically (less likely to break when pulled). But it's super annoying when you have a heavy wall wart, or an old cord.
Danish one looks happy ;)
@@mildlydispleased3221type G is cumbersome and not that much versatile or powerful. I prefer type I (AU/NZ version, with sleeved pins) and J
All of the outlets in every one of my apartments in Quebec have been mounted ground up. When I first moved here I looked into why, and a lot of places just said "they're safer" and cited the same reasons here. I have yet to be electrocuted during a traditional game of Jette le Couteau á la Mur, but it does come with the additional annoyances mentioned.
I do like how one gets to yell "Criss de Tabernak!" when the knife gets lodged.
@@davidjames4915 Calice ! mdr
L'esti de batard de plug a encore explosé caliss.
I'm STILL chuckling at Steve Mould's homage to your presentation style and for you to now be directly addressing him in your blooper reels is making it even better.
What video was that again?
@@eclectic-kitty it happens just after the one-minute mark in *This "perpetual motion" device is really clever*
Absolutely hilarious!
@@Leron... You can get the joke by the power of watching two videos
Yes and weirdly hostile. Either some great acting or the homage by Steve was unappreciated. Everyone loves a good RUclips creator beef. I hope we can see the escalation increase in a subtle but definite "Those who know, know" kinda way.
I say this out of boundless respect and admiration: when you call something pedantic, I take that as an expert opinion.
I'm always amazed at how they always know what exactly the wrong orientation is for my application when using 45 degree plugs.
They are designned by Murphey
I’m so glad I can continue to play throw knives at the wall without having to constantly worry. Thank you Alec from technology connections.
I work at a medical college. A couple years ago, one of our wings went through a major renovation. I noticed that the electricians were installing all of the outlets upside down with the ground pin on top. I asked one of them why. He said, "I dunno, it's what the boss wants."
That's code for hospitals
@@danl6634 We're not a hospital, though. Accordingly, the other outlets in the building are not upside down. That's why I wonder why they were doing it.
"I dunno, it's what the boss wants." describes most of the coin flip choices at my office.
Probably, the electrical subcontractors had in their contract this very clause. Ground plug up.
Code requires the U ground to face up because most people use their thumb on top of a plug to pull it out. In turn your thumb can touch the metal prong so if the outlet is not installed with the U ground facing up a person can potentially touch the hot and neutral prongs with their thumb as they remove a plug.
My mother got a new refrigerator ( a long time ago ) with a right angle plug with the ground pin on top. She told me to flip the outlet. Of course having worked in the field I just had to have the quite common gall to 'properly' inform her that's impossible. She called me a liar and 'questioned' my professionalism, so we entered into a spittle blowing contest which I decided to end about a half hour later by pulling the refrigerator out and scalding her about her impossible dream scape! But I didn't say anything as I quieted down humbly and went outside to my truck to get my toolbox. When I unplugged the refrigerator and looked unbelievably at it sure enough the ground pin was on top.
The first moral of the story is sometimes you run across the strangest most bizarre things. And moral number two is, sometimes the impossible happens and mother is right about something in your chosen profession.
My mother-in-law is a self-taught medical diagnostician like that. I feel you.
@@k.b.tidwell Sometimes the self-taught people can be more knowledgeable about certain aspects. They don't have the "well this is how it was always done" mentality that some professionals fall victim to.
Your ability to make me interested in something I have never thought nor cared about, and actually provide a sense of enjoyment and education in the process, is amazing. This is one of my favorite channels.
Ditto. Especially since I'm in the UK where this just isn't an issue.
@@manekdubash5022 Fellow Brit here, me too.
I worked at a senior living facility in their corporate office. We once got to take a tour of one of our facilities, and they were really proud of installing the plugs upside down, because it was “safer” for the residents.
I was a victim of the “falling metal wall plate” scenario. I had the room painted and the painter removed the wall plates. Afterwards he forgot to screw in the plate. I went to plug something in and the plate fell down and shorted out. Sparks and a nasty char mark was the result.
Bleach and a good soaking should get the char mark out, otherwise just buy a new pair.
Wow! That could have been a whole lot worse.
I replaced the metal wall plates. They should be prohibited by code.
Is he still alive?
_... Sparks and a nasty char mark was the result._
And yet, you're alive to tell the tale.
As a writing professor, I'm always delighted with your scripts. Thanks for the effort you put into these videos - they're always informative and well executed!
I went on holiday to America recently, and i was really surprised at how loose the plugs were compared to other places I've been. Living in the UK, plugs will only expose pins if you VERY deliberately pull it from the wall, at which point, the connection is already broken.
Edit: Also almost all plugs are 90 degree plugs.
@@KeyDx7 Also, frequently used plugs. If they stayed in a hotel where people were plugging and unplugging things everyday, then it would be more surprising if they werent worn out
@@KeyDx7 yeah but no matter what no one can argue that UK and EU plugs aren't superior to US ones in every single way... it just makes sense since they could look at everything wrong with the US one and improve on it.
@@KeyDx7 But then, perhaps that's an additional point, even old plugs and outlets in the UK still work fine, they don't wear out in such an equivalent manner.
I know what ethstring means though, when I visited NYC in 2000 I was surprised at how iffy the wall sockets & cable connections were.
About 20 years ago I began seeing UK plugs with a chunky switch and LED indicator already included, which are totally awesome (perfect for extension leads that don't have their own switch for each socket). They were very cheap, 45p at the time from B&Q. I bought a whole box, so useful for devices such as soldering irons. But then after a few years they vanished from stores, returning some years later in basically the same design but a lot more expensive, needlessly so I would presume. Marketed as 'new' of course, but the idea isn't.
In the UK I reckon the only reason why wall sockets get replaced is if they physically break somehow (very rare), as part of a full rewiring or just for cosmetic reasons, such as vintage brass outlets tarnishing. Funny thing, when a property is rewired, all the existing sockets are replaced even if there's nothing wrong with them. Great opportunity to nab some free sockets for future use. The place I rent was rewired a few years ago, so now I have a whole bag of spares. It doesn't take much to clean them up so they're good as new.
A bigger issue perhaps with UK sockets (and indeed plugs) is more of a hidden one, namely the quality of the actual wiring connections inside the socket or plug. A lot of electricians have pretty shoddy wiring abilities, grud knows why, and many home users have little clue either. When I've removed cables from plugs or worked on wall sockets, encountering less than ideal stripped ends is all too common.
Some decades ago it was common for products to be sold with no plug attached at all, one bought them separately, which at least provided some aesthetic choice at the expense of a little hidden cost, but it meant that as a child in I'd say pre-80s Britain it was common to be taught how to wire a plug, whereas as nowadays I bet few parents bother, or even know themselves.
As for standing on the pins of a loose plug, that's just a clever extra design feature intended to pretrain future parents to the evils of loose Lego pieces. :)
Lastly, many UK plugs are separate to the cable, so they can at least be reused, but as mentioned this means the wiring needs to be decent, so one could argue the moulded plug has an advantage there even if it lacks reuse. That's an oddity I've noticed of some very old plus, the way the cord is gripped can be a little odd.
@@KeyDx7 The spectrum is part of the problem, that spectrum doesn't exist on the standard UK/EU plugs, if you find one that is 50 year old here it is still perfectly safe to use unless damaged by something else than everyday use.
@@KeyDx7 I mean it depends on code too / the electrician
In Pakistan, they typically use the two pin style plug sockets and we've got the odd UK sockets in the house too. The UK sockets are solid. The two pin style sockets, not so much
The house was built about a decade ago I believe
I'm really enjoying my UK Type G plug. It's only design flaw is that its very painful to step on and always lands face down
Is it made by LEGO? They REALLY hurt when stepped on ! :P
@@FormulabruceStepping on a Type G plug can result in a puncture wound through the foot: I speak from personal experience.
..and it is fused so that you need skills tools and spare parts to find and repair faults, Oh and its shutters need to be released by an earth pin, so you need an eath pin even when you don't need an earth pin. And its big and expensive.
Try stepping on a type I, the angled plug always gouges out a chunk
Uk sockets and plugs are the best😊
This video made me realize how much safer the European plugs and sockets are. For example: the sockets are recessed into the wall by a fair amount, right angle plugs are pretty common, and designed to be much beefier and in a way that they can be stacked one above the other. Some even have a ring to pull on to make removal easy
Look into British plugs, they have so many more safety features than American and even European.
Yes people have been dying like flies here in the US my entire life. SAVE US EUROPE!!! or maybe at some point safety is a waste.
The smaller the manufacturing and supply of a given product, the easier it is to make changes in that industry. Progress is stifled by over supply of older engineering/tech.
@@terrylandess6072 So are you suggesting Europe has fewer power outlets than the USA?
@@cambridgemart2075 So are you suggesting that I'm suggesting something that I never said or implied? My statement is in relation to the ability to make changes to commonly used objects for local use. IF anything, it's a compliment to Europe for being more flexible. Take the bait elsewhere.
My older home has all the outlets ground prong up and it drives me insane. Power strips and cable management is an absolute nightmare. I’ve replaced a few and rotated them but this video hit me harder than you know. Great stuff my man, keep up the good work!
I work in a building that has them all ground pin up. When I asked about it the site electrician explained that plugging in something, angling it in from above it makes for a better ground-first contact.
But as someone who'd switched to using right-angle plugs for things wherever possible, they are an annoyance since they are now all angled upwards and therefore pull on the plug more.
I'd actually like to have the whole wallplate rotated 90deg (but the plug still "vertical") so that having them side-by-side ought to be better than one above the other.
TOPIC SUGGESTION: There was a portable mini refrigeration device powered by a paraffin stove in the early 20th century called a "Crosley IcyBall". It had no moving parts and consisted of two chambers with water and ammonia. I was amazed at how simple its function.
i would like to learn more about this
The basic idea is still in use today, particularly in RVs. Their called evaporative cooling refrigerators. My 2017 camper's Fridge/freezer has no moving parts and is an ammonia cooled device that runs on either electric or propane. The difference is that the old device you're talking about uses paraffin as the heat source and modern RV refrigerators use either a small propane burner, or an electric heating element. In most cases, like mine, they run on either my 12v battery or propane, depending on which I decide to use at the time. The disadvantage is they are harder to control temperature and take a lot longer to cool than a compressor based fridge/freezer. My freezer usually gets down to 0 deg F, but it takes a while. They are still being sold in new RVs, but in the last 5 years or so, 12v compressor based refrigerators, or 120v by using an inverter have become more popular due to quicker cooling and more control.
@@raymorgan4657 - Thankyou . The Crosley Icyball Has vanished from life now. It was so simple. so low tech. I wonder if they have a use in disaster reliefe areas keeping phrmaceuticals cold.
@@timetraveller6643 The Icyball you mentioned may have vanished, but like I mentioned, the ammonia based, no moving parts cooling that is heated by a flame or heating coil hasn't. It's is still very much in use and sold today. Just look up 2-way or 3-way RV refrigerator. No moving parts at all, but the RV modern versions do use 12 volt from he battery to run a control board. On propane (instead of a paraffin burner) it simply heats the ammonia coil.
My father said their first refrigerator ran on kerosene. My first encyclopedias from back in 1957 only had a diagram of a kerosene refrigerator, not an electric one.
You are the only channel i could watch an 18 minute video on wall plugs and love it! It's weird i always see GFCI plugs installed correctly but never the standard ones!
Having looked at many apartments in the Chicagoland area, I can confirm that not only the classic vertical(0°) and horizontal (90°) positions exists, but a whole plethora of other options as well. Many landlords seem to prefer 37.2°, for example.
"Many landlords seem to prefer 37.2°" - is there any tolerance in that figure?
Former electrician here. My opinion on it is that if you step on a cord and pull the plug out of the wall, the ground plug will be the last thing to come out if it's in the classic orientation. That'll give you more protection from a serious shock, even if the risk of a minor shock is higher.
A listed receptacle will not let this easily happen. Ground prong contacts in a receptacle are closer to the face of the recept, and the ground prong is longer, too, so, regardless of orientation, it will break contact last. Yes, I know, people are banned for these discussions over at ET or Mike Holt's forums.
I don't think I believe that is true though. Considering how much longer the ground prong is, I don't think there is any orientation that would result in the ground being first to fall out in the event of an accident.
Think about it for a second. How do you get shocked. You need a complete path. That means voltage must have some place to go. With no ground path, no shock. You can literally put a finger on a live circuit and feel nothing other than a slight tingle, unless you are somehow grounded. Which is exactly the same as being grounded and touching a hot. Must have a path.
Having a grounded outlet where the ground prong increases the likelihood of remaining connected only increases the likelihood of getting actually shocked by accident as you become the connecting conduit.
I love you unintentionally showing the dangers of a flathead and a wall receptacle at 8:30 by immediately jamming the screwdriver into the ground socket.
Who even uses flathead screws any more? Like it is 1899?
@@poulhenneI wonder if it’s because it’s nearly impossible to drive one of those screws with an impact driver, thus reducing the possibility of cracking the cover plate. Probably not, though.
@@poulhenne I hate flathead screws with a passion, however most wall plates for plugs and lightswitches us the darn things.
@@poulhenne I always assumed it was for aesthetics. An exposed flathead screw looks slightly nicer than an exposed phillips-head.
The paint on a phillips-head is also more likely to get scratched because the screwdriver naturally cams out when the screw is tightened all the way, scratching a bit of paint out of the "plus" in the process. Flathead screw drivers don't cam out and thus don't scratch the paint nearly as much (unless the screw is already damaged).
Yeah, they use slotted screws as part of a stupid effort to camouflage it into the wallplate.
As a curious first grader, I was able to notice that electric appliances got whatever it was that they needed out of those two pin outlets on the wall. This was before three hole outlets became the thing. I was also able to figure out that metal was an important factor. It was then that I conducted my first known scientific experiment. It involved bending the legs of a hair pin and scraping the plastic blob off the ends.
I was able to prove that electricity was dangerous if proper precautions were ignored.
That makes me so glad I grew up with a dad who used to work with electronics. He mostly fixed things like TVs and PCs, but he taught me a lot about safety, how things work, and I got to see him take apart and fix a laptop my cousin had a problem with. He let me use his voltage meter a few times to just experiment with what was conductive.
One thing I thought he should mention is the fact that two grounded right-angle plugs are impossible to use on the same outlet. This is why I think duplex receptacles should be installed horizontally (as compared to the current installation), but with the ground pins facing out on either side.
In my experience big right angle plugs for things like portable ac units block the second plug on purpose. The reason being that the one load is close enough to tripping the breaker that they don’t want you adding any more load to that circuit.
@@mh98177 You’re right about overload protection, however, I have some light duty extension cords that do the same thing. Good point though!
why would you not do what we do in the uk and have them side by side and facing so both wires go downwards lmfao
That's why I like the 45° ones he mentioned. Best of both worlds.
This is why they sell foot-long power extension cords, so the plugs don't crowd each other, especially the wall warts (plugs with a power converter)
I work in biomed (in-hospital medical equipment repair) and the biggest culprit of the hot/neutral up facing short I saw were stainless steel plate covers coming loose and dropping onto prongs. They can't use plastic covers in the OR, it's an infection control issue. 2nd biggest was instruments falling on sagging outlets.
What is the socket itself made of if not plastic? But also, do the installers know about loctite?
There must be at least dozens of ways to avoid 'sagging plugs" etc. in hospitals- recessed outlets, hooded/sleeved plugs like electric cars use, etc. etc. And I'm sure any manufacturer would love to corner the market of "hospital approved" hardware AND insurance companies and every other actor in the healthcare field would love it as another excuse to double or triple our already obscene healthcare bills! ( and I hope not many people have died because housekeeping or nurses accidentally bumped the ventilator cord and suffocated people! wth?)
I stand corrected by a @zachkelley1830 below, except the gouging the consumer part which Zach basically confirms indirectly.
@@dochi1958 All outlets and plugs are already hospital grade, thats what the green dot indicates if you look close at them. In theory plugs should be inspected for termination, tension, and plate fitment. That used to be a part of my job. But in practice there's not enough staff to do that regularly. All ventilators and other life support critical equipment are on internal battery backup and those batteries are replaced every 2 years even if they haven't even been used.
My favorite part of the north american outlet faceplate is that they only use flat head screws. So if you want to remove the faceplate, you have to use a tool the perfect shape to fit into the prong slots. Granted, you should turn off the breaker, but the added risk is also nice.
Turn off the breaker just to remove the faceplate? I bet you fuck with socks on, too!
@@theguy9208 Firstly, LOL, Second, you gotta admit, using a flat head screw these days seems like a cunt move, the thing slips out and you gotta be perfectly paralell to undo it, if it hasn't already been knawed off by butter knives/coins/nail files
Yes, as a confirmation, look at 8:30 where Mr Technology Connections accidentially slips into the ground hole. That could as well have been the live socket...
@@adrianrehwald3253oh no! He might have been connected to ground!
Immm, no screwdriver is going to go in far enough to hit any metal inside the receptacle. It'll taper out way too wide to go in more than 1/8th of an inch. Also, this is plain Darwin award territory.
Since 1975 after I graduated 3 years of electrical school, I install ground down. Why?? EVERY 90 degree outlet for refrigerators the ground is closest to the power cord. I also installed the designated refrigerator/freezer outlets at the same height as the counter top outlets, Then when plugged in, the refrigerator cord is pointing toward the floor. Ground up the cord would point up and have to do a U-Turn to go down to the electric panel on the refrigerator.
I see you included this information in the video. I wrote everything before that section came up. And frankly, even on construction sites, with the ground down, I have never seen any situation occur like you state in this video. Bottom line, I will continue to install outlets with ground down!
@TechnologyConnections The metal ruler thing actually happened to me once. The receptacle was behind a desk and a metal ruler fell into the narrow gap between the desk and the wall, lining the ruler up parallel to the wall so it fell just right, hitting one exposed blade and then likely pivoting to hit the other. I can see such a gap making this much more likely over random knife throwing~
speak for yourself, our family has had knife-throwing competitions ever since AC rural electrification
Never heard of it happening over my entire career as an electrician/contractor. And the fall out more easily with the ground up.
There is a simple solution to this problem that is common in Europe, that I am surprised is not a thing in the USA. In Europe, type C, E and F sockets take plugs with pins that aren't sleeved either. The solution is to recess or shroud them by the length of the pins minus the usual distance between the face plate and the contacts on the inside. That way, because those plugs have a standardized round flange that fits neatly in the recess, you need to insert the plug past the point where you can no longer touch the pins before contact is made. Since the blades on North-American plugs are quite thin it's a better solution than sleeving the pins.
Although there's probably quite a lot of wall warts and angled plugs out there that won't fit in a recessed plug very well, but it wouldn't be that hard to design some kind of screw-on adapter to make those compatible as well.
@@SnakebitSTI I just thought of that too but I was still editing the comment. Yeah, it's going to be hard to make that work without breaking compatibility with some devices. Not that big a deal in my opinion: what you'd do as a legislator is standardize the design of the plug first, and then change the socket standard, maybe 5 or 10 years later. Any equipment that is incompatible, hasn't been replaced by then and is worth keeping could then be equipped with some kind of permanently attached adapter.
@@SnakebitSTI The entire EU just adopted an entirely new, common light fixture connector, the DCL (Device for Connection of Luminaires), making all existing obsolete.
Radical solution, ditch the 120V "neutral" and go straight to 240V with one of the European connectors (there are a few varieties to choose among, let Alex try them out and make a nation wide decision) as the new standard for all new constructions. Might even go to 50 Hz for extra compatibility, though that's optional.
@@johanmetreus1268 As someone from an EU country, this is the first time I've ever heard about this connector. I can't even find any lamps for sale that use it, at least not explicitly mentioned. I can't even find much information on how and where the connector is suppressed to be used.
As far as I'm aware all our lamps, at least residential ones, are either hard-wired using splicing connectors (for fixed lamps) or use standard wall plugs (for movable lamps).
@@SnakebitSTIyou can just google *Leviton decora 15 amp residential grade 1 gang recessed duplex receptacle outlet* and perhaps with half recessed distance as standard.
@@johanmetreus1268 changing the frequency would have to be done simultaneously across the entire grid, it'd be almost impossible and would break stuff that expects 60hz. Honestly most things people would want to travel with are trivial to build to tolerate either anyway, they just convert it to DC for internal use! Probably because a lot of them were designed by the Japanese, actually, and they managed to screw up their grid badly enough that half the country runs on 50 and half on 60
Due to right angle plugs I really like the idea of all of them being opposite so that the ground are always on the outside edge of the receptacle. I really hate when you can't use two plugs on a duo wall receptacle.
What I'd really like to see are sideways pairs that both have the ground pin down so you could put two right angle plugs in and both would have the cords hanging down.
I just love how all the plugs are different and that if you have an extension chord to fit all kinds, and even diagonally so they won't bug each other, you're still screwed no matter what you do :p
Because, you know, all plugs are different, so some might be bigger, others might be smaller, some might be right angle but oriented diagonally, and so on, and so forth. And that's a problem everywhere, even here in Europe.
Also, pedantic fun fact, where I live we call receptacles a stopcontact, which could mean breaker contact or stop contact and I honestly don't know which, if either, and I really don't want to know because neither makes any sense, but then pedantic people will say that the "proper" name is wall contact box 🤣Which I just find such a gosh darn improvement 🤣 It's not wrong, like how a piano is a hammer trigger machine box. Oh, and the one on an extension chord is a table contact box 🤣I mean, at least then call it a 6/7 floor contact box because about 6 out of 7 times it's NOT on a table! :p And some have a little plastic loop so you can hang them from things, so then it's not on a floor or a table.
But whatever, language is fun, and very often very silly :) Most people around here call it either an extension chord or a plug box. I think plug box is a nice find. It works, it's descriptive (all though it has no plugs until you put one or more in) and would work for wall receptacles as well. So we'll never use the only term that sort of makes half sense for all the things it makes sense for because that would be confusing 🤣
Yep my thoughts exactly. This actually seem to be a winner in this game of pick you flaw.
Yeah, whenever I can only use one of the plugs on a wall receptacle I feel like I was ripped off.
6" extensions for the win.
Man... I am so over my outlet cover screw always backing out. I'm also tired of dropping metal objects in that 1/8 gap on my plugs its such a problem. I'm glad someone took the time out of their day to fix this problem plaguing America. THANK YOU!
"Do you know how many games of throwing knives at the wall have been ruined thanks to these terrible plugs?" had me dying
The "at least one" follow up is what got me
I'm CACKLING at that line.
I'm trying to decide if that or the "three-plonged" blooper was funnier.
Laughed so damn hard
One thing I don't like about the duplex outlet is that they are too close together, so often I can't fit 2 plugs
on.
Outlet orientation indeed seems like the least of my problems. What really grinds my gears is the complete inability for anyone to make up their minds on the rectangular orientation of power strips versus wall warts, so there's always a 50-50 chance of whether you end up with a combination that doesn't waste up to 3 adjacent receptacles just to insert one item.
Just use pig tails
This! I buy a power strip with outwards facing plugs and I get sideways facing bricks. While there opposite occurs when they’re in a line. Then there’s the power bricks that are simply chunky on all sides and don’t care about your plug config because they’re covering them all regardless
I have a power strip that advertised itself as unblockable. It has its sockets at a 45 degree angle, and then each one is on a segment that can telescope out a bit over an inch in either direction. I have just one massively oversized power brick for a set of PC speakers that manages to hog 2 outlets when used on this thing.
Why do they make power *strips* though? Why aren't power *octopuses* more common?
True whichever country you're in.
@@joemck85 Cheapness is why. Open a power strip and you will find cheap uninsulated buss bars normally. The rotating kind are different sure, but not that much.
In my 70+ years of life, I've been terrified by many things, but I can't remember the "orientation of receptacles" making the cut of scary things worth remembering. In fact, the times I've been shocked by less-than-fully-inserted plugs, and shocked by other things, my dad always reminded that my most recent shock was just one more thing to watch out for. During my following career in electronics I've discovered way more ways of being way more shocked way more often than the errant finger in the socket. The aluminum Christmas tree tinsel falling onto the tracks of the electric train set below was way more interesting!
Try a houseful of CATS... While none of the electrical nuisances in my childhood turned particularly injurious, there were LOTS of pretty interesting situations... ;o)
A much bigger danger from my experience is the insulation on cheap wires breaking and leaving exposed wires that can easily short.
Even then, the only time I've been shocked by 120V AC is when a garbage (probably not approved) phone charger/ac adapter quite literally fell apart as I was pulling it out. The whole outer casing came off and when I tried to pull the receptacle and the circuit board inside out from the outlet so I could throw it away, I accidentally touched a component of the adapter and got a nasty shock from it. I stopped buying cheap shit after that, most of my AC adapters now are Anker ones because they're smaller and better.
Basically, the biggest risk by far is cheap products that are built so poorly they expose 120V AC when they inevitably fall apart.
Right, this argument, and even more ridiculous arguments routinely made by Euros about their supposed superiority, are absolutely ridiculous. Australia is also particularly ridiculous. None of these supposed "safety" arguments are worth one additional penny to fix, you have to be almost suicidal or willfully negligent to get killed or seriously injured by any of these supposed problems.
So it is a common occurrence to get shocked by that type of plug?
If that's the case then I think it's insane that they are still in use.
@@Jehty_ Not common... The USA is an ENORMOUS place, and that leaves spaces where there aren't building inspectors or great enforcement... Electrical hazard by plugs outright are relatively small, even without shrink-wrapping the prongs or anything, it's rare to have even the occasional finger-zap without someone doing something a bit zany or nefarious outright... AND kids get into the damnedest sh*t for sometimes unfathomable reasons (curiosity?)...
Even so, with a finger-zap, when the prongs are both RIGHT THERE... the shock goes across A finger... you jump and let go, and that's generally it... no worse for the wear and only a little rattled. We hear stories, but until it gets to shoving a pocket knife into a piece of electrical equipment or screwing around with screwdrivers or silverware in toasters (yes, there ARE Americans that stupid) real harm from household circuitry is pretty unheard of, that's why someone getting electrocuted in a shower or bath hit headlines. ;o)
I’m a master electrician it’s allowed either way but the main reason for the ground down is that if something pushes down you want the power to disconnect not the ground . Ground top makes your trigger finger under slip hit the hot . There’s a reason that the national code allows either argument can be made for both, but you do not want the ground to disconnect first .
I dropped a small screwdriver into a slightly exposed outlet as a kid. Sparked, melted a bit of the prongs and almost melted through the entire diameter of the screwdriver. I still have the screwdriver to this day as a reminder how dangerous electricity and plugs can be.
I have two thoughts: (1) when I wired my house, I went "frown up side down" because it's technically ever so slightly safer, but (B) the number of things that just Don't Work Well with ground-up outlets already had me thinking of changing them around. With this video, you've provided the final nail in the receptacle for me to stop procrastinating and start flipping them over.
I had to flip some at my Dad's house for timers that would have been upside down with the ground on the top. To me, it always looks wrong unless the ground is on the bottom. Like this:
😮
😮
Your replication of his little funny in the video didn't go unnoticed by me. Well done.
Ground up generally allows the plug to tork out of the socket.
The biggest issue with angle plugs is that they can cover other outlets, so you can really only use them on the bottom outlet (unless they really changed the design and standardized it)
That would probably require changing the outlet design to have the receptacles be side by side like with the UK design
Unless you have outlets like my house does. The plugs are rotated 90 degrees from what most outlets have (i.e. the plugs are sideways while the entire outlet is vertical).
The plugs at the 14:55 mark solve that issue well enough
@@mrb692 Yes, I have some extension cords with both two and three-prong variants of these 45-degree angle plugs and I LOVE them. Both safer and more stylish. Also I have some Belkin power strips with right-angle plugs that rotate. I would 110% recommend picking up whatever you can with these styles of plugs, and I have not had clearance issues with them, even plugged into other power strips.
They are fairly uncommon, so unlikely that you would have two needing the same outlet. So, always use the bottom outlet, to leave the top usable for straight cords.
What I hate are large adapters with two prongs. I have an electronic piano with a large adapter and a sound module, also with a large adapter. I can plug the top one upside down and it mostly stays in place. But a power bar on the floor with wide spacing for adapters is the best solution. 😮😮
my grandfather's a retired electrician (worked maintenance in an industrial plant) and so far as I can tell, the two principles he brings to every project are 1. you can never have enough outlets. the correct number of outlets is one within reach at all times. and 2. outlets should be installed ground plug on top. this latter drives my grandmother nuts, because all her decorative nightlights are upside down. but I think this is balanced out by his cord management of her *extensive* xmas decorations. for example, she has "candles" to go in all the windows, and he has altered the cords so they are exactly the right length and not an inch longer. each light is labeled with which window it sits in and which outlet it plugs into. impeccable.
this was a really interesting breakdown, thanks for sharing it with us!
I remember this was a (relatively) big thing around 2015. A new university dormitory even installed all outlets in this "upside down" direction. But I've since noticed that new construction puts them up the traditional way again.
There is one good use case for installing receptacles with the ground pin up. The bed rooms of most modern homes have one receptacle powered through to a wall switch. I always install that plug "upside down" to make it clear that is is different from the rest.
I've actually heard several electricians make this claim as well. I had always thought it was a building code standard and never bothered to question it, and have always done this with outlets I install myself. Ground plug at the top = controlled by a switch somewhere.
That's arbitrary. You could achieve the same thing by using contrasting-color outlets, or just having some shape/texture element to the specific plug that is switched (and it's usually only one of the two, not both, and never consistently top or bottom)... In fact, I'd say using color (black for switched) and textured (knurled for switched) would be optimal: super obvious for most people with a glance, but still as ADA-friendly as asking a blind person to rub their hand against the outlet to figure out where the ground is). Also, in a perfect world, having a locking toggle on the outlet itself would be nice to turn this feature on/off - yes, that would cost a bit more, but those stupid plastic switch locks just look ridiculous.
I'm pretty sure that's standard on new builds now.
The Chinese outlet is the same as the AU/NZ outlet, but upside-down. They say it’s to prevent fire-causing shorts if something conductive falls between the top two pins, but here in AU/NZ we just have insulation halfway down the plug pins. Which is safer for finger-based reasons too.
Thanks for that info. Plus a reminder to folks that the Standard (240 volt single phase) Australian/New Zealand style outlets, are also used across a substantial amount of South Pacific Islands (largely because the, um, social and business intercourse, with Aust/NZ, being dominant in the region). So The Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. Plus I would guess Tokelau, Niue and Nauru. Not sure about Kiribati and Tuvalu, but as they were previously The Gilbert and Ellice Islands, they used Australian dollars and were serviced from Australia, then, so likely carried over electric standards also.
Older plugs have all-metal blades. Then you had the time when they changed the standard to require a recessed outlet, but Australian manufacturers couldn’t be arsed changing their products and forced that back out of the standard. Later it got changed again, and now some items such as extension leads and some power boards have the recessed design.
@@boggisthecat Insulated pins came in 2005. The attempt at recessed sockets was initially a failure because of the multitude of things like plugpack transformers which wouldn't fit, although they are now designed for recessed sockets. One would see the shielded part of an extension cord socket cut off in order to fit certain plugs.
@@KiwiCatherineJemma And also PNG which was once an Australian territory. I think Pitcairn Island uses it also.
@@cool386vintagetechnology6
Earlier than that. I used to work for the lab that PDL owned. Pretty sure those were put out around 1998 or so. The standard may have given 2005 as the phase out for unsheathed pins.
I left mine in the face orientation (largely because I have a few things that have a specific orientation like mentioned), but this is making me very glad I changed all the plugs and plates to plastic. I kept one metal light switch plate, but the outlets were a bit mismatched and very old, so I replaced them. Especially where I do use some older appliances (mainly a 1975 sewing machine, and some similarly aged lamps), safety was a concern. I gotta say, I am impressed with some power bars now where they have a thin plastic layer that rotates on top to block access when not in use. I have a couple of those and they also seem to really grab onto the plug in a way that outlets would just let slide, making it much harder to accidentally unplug things.
That being said, my biggest complaint is with phone chargers. Most AC adapters that allow a USB to plug into a wall are just a box with two prongs out the back. They're pretty clunky and very easy to unplug (looking at Samsung's 45W one in particular, as well as MacBook/iPad chargers without the long cable attachment). Thankfully nothing bad happened, and I still have my 3 prong long Mac cable from when they used to be included, but I'd still say the $25 is worth it for the safety even if someone doesn't need the length.
However, one good thing with the modern style of outlets I used in my place, is that they're the ones that don't have that separation in the middle. So it's a rectangle with both in it, and the plate uses a screw at the top, and one at the bottom. Since I'm not trained in electrical stuff, I just went around the house putting the plates on and they're much more sturdy with that second screw.
Odd anecdote regarding the receptacle safety covers for kids. My then 1-year old daughter found one we had removed to plug something in temporarily, and put it in her mouth. It went back into her throat, and cut off her air. She made zero noise and just stood in shock. Gladly I was watching from nearby and ran up, stuck my fingers in and managed to yank it out. Sometimes safety gear has its own hazards; that woke me up.
We had to install the slide-shut receptacle covers because our first kid sought out outlets in use and easily gained access by yanking on the cord of whatever was plugged in.
There was actually a deal with those in the UK where the pin that went in the ground could break off and hold the shutters on the live and neutral open, making the sockets more dangerous rather than less (the UK ones sockets being safe in the first place anyway).
I absolutely love the Breville appliance plugs. They have a hole in them for your finger to easily remove it from the wall, without having to yank on the plug cord or dig your fingernails between it and the wall to pull them out. They are hardily made and, in my opinion, should be the norm. Awesome episode as always, sir.
A right angle plug with a firm plastic ring (that can freely rotate and hang), problem solved.
I like them because of how they make it easy to put a clamp meter on it.
7:10 This actually happened at my place about a year ago: we had an extension cord behind my mom's dresser that ran to some Christmas lights in the hall. One night one of her bracelets (a thin metal chain) fell off the back of the dress and shorted it out... needless to say that it made quite a spark show: also ended up partly melting the bracelet to the plug as well.
The fact that someone watched this video and experienced it probably suggests that it's far more common than is suggested
@@edrose5045 People that have had issues with electrical safety are more likely to watch a video on electrical safety and comment on their issue, vs a large amount of people that have not had these issues, more at 10.
Edit: That being said, you shouldn't ignore electrical safety necessarily because a particular event is unlikely. "No matter how safe you are, accidents will happen", therefore it's best to be prepared in the event of one beforehand. Do a cost vs benefits analysis at your discretion.
I also managed to do this as a kid by pushing a paperclip off the back of my desk which fell onto a plug which wasn't all the way into the receptacle. Shorted out, big soot mark on the wall. But it was a two prong lamp cord so it would have happened either way.
It's a flexible chain, it would have drooped down on either side of the ground pin and shorted between the ground pin and the hot pin anyway...
Yep. My wife was cleaning the bathroom counter and hung a loose necklace from the nightlight. Poof!
Great job! This is the most comprehensive video I've seen about this topic. However, it didn't address code making, product manufacturing, or standards committees influence on these questions. All of these products are also subject to manufacturing process limitations. And the astronomical costs of making even small changes to these designs. The best idea may be to provide GFCI protection for every receptacle circuit. And the NEC has done a lot toward making that happen.
In the UK we have multiple levels of protection, from fuses within the plug to RCD and MCD breakers in the consumer unit. Even with the breaker off you can still trip the unit by touching neutral to earth on the circuit you are trying to extend (by way of a fused connector, of course).
Our house was built in 1957 and at the time grounded outlets were relatively new in residential construction. Every single outlet in the house was installed with the ground on top. I found it pretty frustrating when plugging in appliances (that frequently have "low profile" plugs with the ground pin on the bottom) and wall transformers for electronics that would not stay in place with the weight on top. I ended up re-orienting almost all of them to have the ground on the bottom over the course of several years.
And that's exactly why this video is BS. Ground on the bottom is clearly the better way to install them.
@@markjohnson7887 what are you on about? That agrees with the video? lol
@@markjohnson7887 Clearly someone who didn't watch the video at all, because that is literally the points made in the video.
My home was built in '63, was no rhyme or reason to the up down orientation of the outlets. My microwave has a right angle 3 prong plug, my microwave sits on a shelf between the cabinets above my oven, the outlet it plugs into is about 2 feet lower and off to the side, I flipped that outlet ground side up so I could hang the cord downwards and tuck the cord up nicely without needing a big loop of cord flopping down below the outlet to plug the microwave in.
On the flip side my washing machine also has a right angle 3 prong plug, the outlet for it in my basement sits about 5 feet up the wall and was flipped ground side up when I moved in, so I flipped that one ground side down so the cord could plug in and hang down normally.
Then there's the basement outlet that my sump pump plugs into. That one they ran metal conduit along the exposed brick foundation wall to a metal junction box that is turned sideways...
@@_Frank_the_Tankin a lot of older homes, you have outlets that were added over time and they would be added using the style normal for that area at that time and/or with that one individual who did the installation.
Worrying about them being consistent wasn't really a factor in most homes.
Here in Brasil, we changed our plugs from the US standard to a new national standard just over a decade ago. At first it was awful for compatibility, but it was definitely a change for the best. Probably the best feature is an hexagonal inset on the receiver, which not only is the bestagon, but also solves the issues with partial contacts.
E dificilmente ele desencaixa da parede por ter aquela parte onde o plugue em si vai até o fim.
The Brazil type is based on a International Electrotechnical Commission standard IEC 60906-1 that should've adopted aroud the world but we know that is hard to do, only Brazil and South Africa adopted the standard, until now
@@AndersondaRosaSLi find it so weird that Switzerland adopted a system so similar but incompatible. It's a nice system though, with 10 and 16 amp single and three phase plugs and sockets and backwards compatibility
I have a question about Brasil: how do you distinguish 127 and 220 V sockets? They are the same and you have to check in which area you are or you risk blowing your appliances?
@@elia_bertiI've been to Brazil. They don't distinguish
Thank you for A.) making videos that are so compelling and thorough that I can't help but change my mind, and 2.) listing multifaceted reasons in a way that rewards close listening.
Ground down is also beneficial in flood prone areas, if the flooding reaches the outlet, the ground gets wet first.
As somebody in the UK, I've always been amazed how unsafe your outlets and plugs are.
Imagine how someone from the the UK, but in the USA feels about it
As someone is the US, I've always been amazed at how huge your's are.
@@currentsitguythat’s what she said
Pfft, you are just jealous ours look like cute little shocked faces.
@@personaslates They should be looking shocked, because in the last moment before they became inanimate, they got a brief look at the American plug standards...
Honestly, looking at the plug designs, sideways right angle plugs like the replacement lamp cord you showed need to become a standard. The worst part about right angle plugs right now is that you can only really use 1 per outlet, since the part hanging down ends up covering the other plug or making it impossible to install in the top recepticle. Putting it at a right angle not only makes it fine in BOTH orientations, but makes it so you can use more than one per plug. I don't know why this isn't everywhere.
I like rotating flat plugs more, they can be placed running in any direction
Let me tell you about the beauty of 45°-rotated _outlets,_ especially on extension cords.
That being said, Side by side Uk style sockets would also fix it.
Me and my siblings never did play throw the knife at the wall, but we did play throw the penny at the outlet! We blew through a few fuses over a few months before our parents caught on with the repeated fuse blowing and scorch marks on the wall. Never did claim we were a bright bunch!
I agree. The best solution without changing our plug design or building thicker walls for inset outlets is the 90-degree plug. Only one problem, which you _sorta_ addressed: Interference with other plugs. But there's an even better solution, both in specific and overall when 2 ideas are combined together. And that's to have the ground holes face away from each other, and simultaneously to make it standard for all outlets to be mounted sideways, Chicago style.
Now you can ALWAYS get TWO 90-degree plugs or large bulky power adapters in each outlet, AND the combined sideways design and flat plugs will prevent them from pulling to expose the prongs. The ONLY way to mess this up (or indeed make the entire situation worse than it is in general) would be to make the ground holes face TOWARD each other. THAT failure would indeed make it entirely impossible to use the other socket with a 90-degree plug or a bulky power adapter.
The only thing I could see being worse would be plug in air freshener pods. Those would have to be redesigned to all be reorientable. Or, much like that splitter you showed, there would have to be another product on the market that would adapt the outlet rotation 90-degrees so that the ground hole can face down and allow the air freshener to work normally.
17:09 - just now realising that those safety cover thingies make a TON of sense in the US. Around here in the UK they get referred to as "socket openers" because the act of placing a bendy plastic thing in a wall outlet which already had a MECHANICAL SHUTTER PROTECTING THE LIVE PINS when empty demonstrably makes shocks more likely, not less
Tamper resistant receptacles are now code required to pass inspection, he literally mentions this like 20 seconds later.
@@ericdoesstuff7568my apartment has one receptacle that is tamper-resistant. It's also plug-resistant. It's smack dab in the middle of the apartment in the island so I like to use it for my vacuum, but it's a fight to get the plug in every single time.
I live in a very old rental home (literally built before the USA was the USA, although the electrical was obviously installed later). A number of the outlets don't work at all and, with some others, only the top or bottom works, and I can never remember which one. After several years of always plugging my rice cooker or air popper into the wrong one first, I installed the plastic child safety doo-dads on the non-working ones.
8:40 This actually happen to me once. The plate was metal and wasn't secure by a screw, it just snapped in place. I don't recall exactly what happened, but I somehow dislodged the plate and it fell on the two prongs. It left a really ugly mark on the outlet and I had to replace the whole thing.
Ground up definitely makes sense for hospitals and workshops where 20amp circuits and standard 3 prongs are the norm. Infact, if the code was updated for 15 amps face side 20 amps inverted that would be great.
that's been standard convention for the last 60 years without need of a code to enforce it. today people are just dumb and don't know why some plugs were installed upside down.
My buddy in middle school played, "Stick a fork in the outlet." He won.
If there are two outlets, why not just make the top one “upside-down” (ground pin at the top) and keep the other one “frowning face”? That way, you can get the benefits of the ground-pin-at-the-top outlet for one plug, and be able to use right-angle plugs in the other outlet. This might not be ideal for when you have two devices of the same type next to each other, but it’s still a plus. All the dual outlets in my flat (in Poland, so using the French standard with the ground pin sticking out of the outlet) do it this way, even though I’m pretty sure that having the ground pin at the top is the standard (all the single outlets have it there). This arrangement with inverted ground pins also lets me use two right-angle-plug devices in one outlet for more flexibility.
This is not a bad idea at all! Although, one thing I do really appreciate about the sideways outlet convention near Chicago is that we don't have cords falling on top of one another. Perhaps we've been doing it right all along...
I was going to comment about the increased manufacturing cost of this approach limiting the commercial viability given that outlets are a commodity product but then I realized I would absolutely pay extra for this. It would be so nice to be able to plug two power adapters into a single receptacle without requiring an extension cord. I'd also be down for receptacles mounted sideways with the ground down on both - the cable management with right angle plugs would be perfect.
You are a freaking genius.
@@alc5440 When my first (and only) child came around and I was redoing one of the rooms as his bedroom (and our bedroom at the same time) they had those plugs with the plastic shutters over them and while I'm not sure if they are code or not (I thought I read something that they were) I very happily bought them for all the outlets even though they cost significantly more than the standard plug. Now I can have peace of mind that a random toy probably isn't going to wedge itself in the hot outlet of an unused plug.
@@alc5440 I assume the intent would be to make it a standard going forward, so the manufacturing cost would be offset by the number sold. And, honestly, we produce enough variants as-is that it likely wouldn't be that much more expensive.
While I agree with you wholeheartedly, Dan's Pro Shop did a short on outlet orientation. He makes the point that, in a machine shop with metal filings and shavings and all sorts of crap flying all over, the odds of someone accidentally wining a game of "throw the knives at the wall" with a foreign object go WAY up. Obviously far less likely in the home environment, but still interesting to keep in mind. Might be worth flipping your weird sideways outlets to have the neutral on top, if its in that kind of setting. Great video, as always!
Anyone can find a corner case and say "but what IF...", but usually if there's a use-case that has shown an elevated risk, the NEC or OSHA will directly address it. Industrial and jobsite electrical fires most frequently involve damaged cord-and-plug sets and defective tools.
I've actually seen this happen before. The most common way of cleaning off machines is with an air gun, and chips will fly onto the floor and then later swept up. Someone at my work did trip a breaker from this.
@@hank4239 main reason machine shop at my university had IEC connectors on everything.
In that scenario wouldn't it make more sense to have some sort of covering to prevent stuff falling in?
@@MorbidEel some companies make those now, however they're not required and unless it happens no one is going to even think about that. What we did at my work was buy extension cords with those little tabs that you can put a screw through so you just screw it in after plugging it in
The worst aspect of our plugs is when you have sideways sockets under an overhang (eg recessed under the shelf in a bedside stand) and you can't see down to where the plug is. You naturally want to reach out with you fingertips to feel where the holes are and guide it in.
Somehow, it's been several months since we got these bed stands with under shelf sockets from Amazon so I think I've got the urge controlled by now but it's kinda surprising I didn't get shocked.
It's perfectly safe to feel the outside of the socket to find it's position, so long as you aren't putting the plug in at the same time.
@@grn1 Yes, ofc but if you don't feel both at the same time you've lost that position when u go to put the plug in after checking. You might know the orientation but try plugging something in with your eyes closed in a sideways socket and you'll see what I mean.
I like how America uses electricity to promote Darwinism!
I swear you have made videos on the most fascinatingly mundane things, and I love almost every one of them that I've come across and not searched for them once. It's often a delight.
As a home remodeler running my own business, you did a absolutely excellent job on this!
Even soon covering the tamper-proof receptacles next is a plus.
Please try to find ones that are not junk.l, I haven't. Homeowners have me change them out all the time. They break easily to. Also look into the lobbying that happened to get these into the code books. Apparently it has more to do with charging more money then actual real world safety conditions... but we'll see. Looking forward to this vid.
As a chef in a French restaurant and having only one testicle, I agree with you!
I just did a whole host of outlet replacements. The Cooper TR outlets I put in seem to be pretty solid currently, dunno how long they will last (the old Leviton 30-year-old outlets were so worn it was a hazard)
*I don't buy the cheap loose receptacles, but was taught to install them ground down.*
I've liked Leviton TBR15 for my home. It's a step up in price going from residential grade to specification commercial grade so good luck convincing clients to pay for an upgrade that isn't cosmetic. If you can do it the tamper mechanism has been solid for 4 years for me.
You could always buy the premuim or commercial outlets instead of the economy. I have never had them break and not sure what those people are doing to destroy those, but they may be the cheap ones made with cheaper plastics and metal seated solidly in their place.
In Brazil, we use type N. The wall connection is deep in the receptacle and the live plugs have a plastic padding.
So it's virtually impossible for a live plug to become exposed (while connected).
looks very similar to type J used in switzerland, wonder why they are not the same
Brazil made a mistake when switching to Type N for everything. They should have used Type N for 127V outlets and Type G for 220V outlets so it's impossible to plug a device into an outlet of the wrong voltage. I know they're supposed to be marked, but that seems like a half measure.
Do you know why Brazil has two different standard voltage and why they never standardized on only one? Here in the US we have both 120V and 240V, but 240V is only for appliances drawing large amounts of power like an electric oven or clothes dryer, and they have plugs which are different from the standard 120V outlet.
@@LoveClassicMusic0205Voltage in Brazil is regional. Half of the country (including here where I live) is only 220V, so changing the plug or not doesn't matter.
In places where it is 110V, only some parts of the house (usually the kitchen) are 220V, while the rest is 110V.
Furthermore, apart from a few small things, everything else is bivolt, so the voltage difference doesn't really matter.
As for the question of why, the answer is historical: at the time they went to install these distribution networks, they hired companies from several countries. Those from North America (in general) went to the south and companies from Europe (also in general) went to the north
@@LoveClassicMusic0205 perhaps, but we have two types of plugs (one more thick than the other), we could have used those and use color coded outlets as well.
As why we have both 120/240v, I believe it’s related to the grid. Some cities in my current State are fully 240, while others are 120v (but in those cities, you still see 240v things like AC, Ovens, Driers, etc.)
I find it amusingly fitting that you outlined the exact set of situations that actually led to a scorched outlet face in my house. My stepdad wanted to prove me wrong about the outlet spacing in our basement and used a tape measure, floating it along the wall rather than along the floor. And one outlet happened to have a two-prong wall wart for a cordless phone charger that had been dislodged at some point. The tape bounced a couple times before connecting firmly and with an arc and bang tripped the breaker. He was fine, though rather spooked in his quest to try and prove me wrong. As well as the incident leaving scorch marks on the outlet and three pairs of notches in the tape measure. Years later I still have that whole set to show that it can happen, but indeed I don't worry about the orientation because the situation was so specific in the setup. In fact when I put in the new one the replacement is oriented the same way as the previous one. It just hasn't been a major concern for me in the many years that I've been dealing with electrical.
@@karlwithak. Inverted is still to code. You won't fail an inspection for being up to code
I lived for three years in a house with ground-up outlets (I'm not sure if original 1960 or a remodel possibly in the 1980s) and all of the annoyances listed are extremely real. I did become an afficionado of *rotating* 45 degree flat plug power strips!
You did touch on the one problem that right-angle plugs have: the general inability to use two of them in one duplex receptacle. Power strips that have the grounds down the middle of the strip have their ability to handle several cords hamstrung to only one or two by right-angle plugs (which is why I look for power strips that have the grounds along a side, so right-angle plugs - and power bricks - stick off the side of the strip.) Having the cord exit on the 45 degree helps quite a bit, though it isn’t feasible for every use.
Some power strips mitigate this by putting the sockets at a 45 degree angle. At least here in Schuko country, maybe there's a reason you can't do that with NA sockets.
We *could* solve that in the future by turning the orientation of the outlets 90 degrees and installing so they're side by side. Not saying we *should* do that though.
Electrician here. I have not once encountered any issues having facing them either "up" or "down" so far in my career. 99% of the time we install them with the ground closest to the floor. We sometimes flip the entire outlet (so the ground pin is closest to the ceiling), in order to easily differentiate half hots from normal outlets (half hots being one half of a given outlet being powered by a switch, while the other half always gets power). Makes it easy to explain to homeowners over the phone, and easy for everybody to remember. Also I recently installed those Adorn outlets (as well as switches, fan timers, dimmers, etc) for the first time, they are pretty neat. The pop-up outlets are especially fun to just press in and out lol
Edit, side note: the vast majority of dryers we see have right angle plugs, with the grounds being the top. We always have the ground of our dryer outlets facing the ceiling unless told otherwise. Definitely a mute point though, as you're not plugging in and out dryers constantly.
Another electrician here: there is nothing in the code dictating what is up.
@@juz4kix which is why I put them in quotes. Because "up" and "down" are subjective.
In some homes I've been in northeast Ohio, the outlets that are "upside down" were the ones that were switched. I think this may have been a local phenomenon brought on by the upgrade to grounded outlets in some older homes (where having a lamp outlet on a switch instead of a fixture was common). In these homes, I would find all but one outlet was "shocked face" oriented so you knew something was different about the outlet. Usually, this was something that was noticed only after something was plugged in and then discovered to be switched via light switches often across the room.
Most homes I've lived in around central Ohio have all the plugs the same direction. My current home all of the plugs are "upside down", except a couple that have been replaced. One previous home had all of the plugs on GFI circuits upside down. It really just seems based on the builder's whim.
I've seen that in Colorado as well, but mostly in older construction. My 2006 built house has a switch outlet in the ground-down position.
I've lived in several houses in Northern California which use that convention too. It's a bit annoying for all the reasons Alec mentioned here - especially because in many cases, only *one* of the outlets in the receptacle is actually switched. They should do something like use a different color receptacle instead; then they could even have only the switched outlet be different.
I’ve seen switched upside down in a few places I have been at in southern California as well. I like the convention, but personally I go around a stick a colored dot sticker on the plate next to any switched outlet in places I move into.
It's common across the country. Every place I've lived identifies the switched outlet by having the ground up.
You would also be surprised by the amount of people who think they have ghost switches that do absolutely nothing.
A typical duplex outlet can also be set up with one hole hot all of the time, and the other hole switched. There's a plate on the terminals that can seperate the two outlets.
7:53 gota love the dedication to have a live demonstration of what could actually happen if that gap is bridged
The "throw the knives at the wall" bit had me rolling.
A proud Boston tradition
@@conqu2I'm not sure if I got the joke
You are one of my favorite creators. It never ceases to amaze me how a channel about these kind of things sounds super niche but you still managed to grow it to over 2M subscribers. That's a testament to your skill as a content creator.
This whole anti-US-plug pedantry is silly. There is nothing inherently bad about US plug design. The guy complaining about the plug literally runs his own wires from the breaker panel in his house.
It's dumb. It's pedantry. But most of all, it's jealousy of the EU nanny state. The last person I would ever want to see working in any bureaucracy is Alex.
@@christo930 Wut
@@christo9301. what does this comment have to do with what you're saying. 2. If you don't like him, don't watch him. 3. Why no have safer standards if we can.
He's a genuinely good content creator and the best part is that he doesn't add bloat to his videos like many others do, he's straight to the point and the few jokes he makes are witty instead of forced or cringy.
@@christo930there is a video by a guy named Tom Scott explaining why the British plug is the best one.
This is probably something you thought of, but if you mentioned I missed it:
Right angle plugs facing straight down are alright when you only have one of them, just put it on the bottom. But what happens when you have two plugs with all that added bulk demanding space parallel to the line of sockets, and you need/want them plugged in near each other? And when you have to concede to pull out a power strip to solve the issue, all bets are off for tripping hazards.
This might be a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of things, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of product designers out there saw that choice between 'make our product slightly less of a tripping hazard' and 'make our product universally easy to plug into any outlet space' and went with the simpler crowd-pleasing option.
avoiding conflicts like that is the point in 45 degree plugs (almost always down-right), and one of the advantages of the 'straight out the back' type (countered by all the down sides of 'straight out the back' if your plug design is bad). Actually, one thing I've noticed a lot where I live (not the USA), is that Multiboxes (powerstrips, I guess) tend to have 45 degree plugs, but the sort of things that fully expect they're going to be plugged Into a multibox tend to have 'straight out the back' plugs...
and then there's the never to be sufficiently damnned wall warts. Bad enough when they all point Down (introducing the levering problem even in plugs that wouldn't have it otherwise), but then some genius started making multiboxes with two rows of plugs facing opposite ways to accomodate them... and after getting one I encountered, for the first time ever, a wall wart where the cable came out the TOP! Which, naturally, couldn't go in ANY of the sockets on that multibox.
Though more recently I bought a multibox with... 10 sockets? 12? it deals with this by having some of the sockets further apart to accomodate wide wall warts, and as a result the sockets on one side are Not in line with the sockets on the other side (and they also have the two sides facing opposite ways), so there's always at least a couple of sockets that are viable for any given stupid non-standard plug. So long as you don't have too many that are non-standard in the same fashion.
Mentioned this as well. . . He even shows this in one of his demos, but still doesn't mention it. I found that odd. . . ;)
and that's why in germany we use plug type F or also called Schuko. it can never be touched when it is plugged in and you can also plug it in the other way round.
Somehow every 3 months or so this man rolls up in my recommended. That’s what I subscribed to him for. It is a sublime experience each time.
It's possible to make plugs and outlets much better with just a few simple steps (some of which you already mentioned):
1) Yes, mount them Chicago-style (landscape) - but rotate each outlet, ideally so the ground pin is upwards.
2) Have the cord come out of the bottom of the plug (furthest away from the ground pin). That way, the cords never tangle & don't pull out under their own weight.
3) Make the ground pin a bit longer than the live/neutral pins, and partially sleeve the live/neutral. Optionally add a "shutter" to close off the live/neutral if there's no ground pin.
4) Make the pins way bigger, and rectangular
5) Add switches.
6) Oh, er, sorry, I seem to have been describing a British double socket 😆
I think british socket is still pretty inferior to the standard EU socket.
orient so neutral is upwards
I think you forgot the fuse in the plug
You forgot Add a fuse to each plug.
But I do agree with 2,3 and 5. And you can already find tamper-resistant outlets with shutters at your local hardware store. These don't rely on the ground plug and instead require live and neutral to be inserted at the same time.
never understood the switches. if they accidentally get bumped at the same time as something comes to short it doesnt matter how many switches you got.
I'm a big fan of 90° plugs also because I often have furniture in front, and it both lets the furniture fit closer to the wall and prevents it from bending the plug out if it moves (such as a bed on a hard floor when people get in too quickly).
Given all options, safest orientation is on it's side with the ground on the left.
Also never in my life was I concerned that I was going to be touching the prongs while plugging it into an outlet
Window blinds with metal ball chain draw mechanisms were the first time I saw an issue with foreign objects slipping between plug and socket. Having seen the resultant fireworks, I now appreciate the proximal insulation on live and neutral in Australian plugs.