ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Receptacle ground up or down?

Joe,

That is exactly what I mean. So "IS" it better to have the ground up or down? As long as the stress is off the cord, does it matter?

Caper

I work at a newly constructed hospital and all recepticals are ground up.However you can get into a problem when hospital equipment comes with 90 degee plugs.With the cord up the wall like this the staff who are can be in a real hurry will always gab the cord.HG grade recepticals and plugs are very thight and it's a common thing for a nurse to rip a ground up 90 degree receptical right out of the wall.Then theres calls for recpticals that have a ground prong busted off in them and the search for the equipment.One more thing is that the insulation will be pulled away where the cord enters the cap faster resulting in a shock.when you go into the hospital the heart monitor ect travels around the building with you and can get plugged in five times a day easy.

I was taught that the recepticle hot should face up when installing in a horizontal position. That way you can always tell where the hot is when removing it.

Joe,

What happened to the screw for that metal plate? (The picture probably came from your archives and you don't know) If it is common practice to not screw in a metal plate then the ground should diffently be in the up position.

Gibson:

The entire assembly was sent to me by one of my students. He said that the screw was actually missing, and the plate was positioned against the wall, being held in by a low voltage power supply used to supply some sort of equipment.

When the transformer was removed slowly by some unknown person, it caused the arcing.

I can tell you this, in one of my onsite classes one of the electricians showed me a box full of receptacles, similiar to those shown here and they were all with their plates and receptacles in a similiar condition.

I have many more pictures and they show the same type of condition.

You mean one of these type X-formers?

http://users.stargate.net/~vkkelly/up.jpg

http://users.stargate.net/~vkkelly/down.jpg


What's the advantage again?

I don't get it at all...

[This message has been edited by sparky66wv (edited 07-31-2002).]

Sparky:

The handy box plate looks like the screw is secured so it will not fall out and away from the plate.

The pictures above are my reminder, and I believe that is is the best solution, if your want the U ground "UP" use a nonmetallic plate and screw.


[This message has been edited by Joe Tedesco (edited 07-31-2002).]

Hmm, I don't see how it would make much difference with a two-prong non-grounding plug.

As for the fixing screw becoming loose in the first place, maybe this would be a case for duplex receptacles to be designed so that the cover plate takes two screws like a switch or single recept.

Joe, Paul and Sparky make a good point. If it was a low voltage power supply like the one in your photo it wouldn't have made any difference which way the receptacle was installed if it was vertical. The same holds true for most office equipment like calculators that have a transformer type cap. 99% of the computers, monitors and printers I am seeing lately have a 90º cord cap at a 45º angle with the ground pin @ 6:00 and the cord @4:00 to enable several to be plugged into a surge power strip. Ground pin up receptacles would put the cord cap in a strain when plugged into a wall recept. I'll stick with ground pin down unless specifically requested to do otherwise.

Joe, the handy cover was the only metal cover I had this morning...

But yes, my point would be that the lack of ground pin would make the solution moot, (with all due respect)...

However, I agree that in the case of three prong plugs, ground up would give an additional measure of safety.

I'm not completely disagreeing with you, just trying to bring to light why the NEC CMP's are reluctant to make a decision on this.

Thanks for posting my pics... Couldn't remember HTML this morning or something...

-Virgil

Sparky:

I get your point, and agree with you and should have realized that by now. That just goes to show us that we can learn someting new every day, especially in our business.

The code for the images when uploaded to this site, from your FTP ste is:

[img] image goes here, no spaces [/img]