Paul Hovnanian P.E. said:
daestrom said:
[snip]
This always gets to me. Like homes have falling metal plates everywhere.
When's the last time you had a falling metal plate anywhere?
Off the back of my workbench or desk? Lots of times.
A friend of mine (a carpenter) witnessed a co-worker extend a measuring
tape along a wall and manage to let it slip down onto a plug.
Sounds like you and your friend need to be more careful. Stuff falling
everywhere is more a hazard than the ground pin issue ;-) Surely your
friend knew that measuring taps 'collapse' frequently and don't always 'go'
where you want them to.
But obviously, 'stepping on plugs' causing them to pull from the wall is
just not being very careful. Nor is dangling metal tape over the top of
some power plugs. Probably for every account that people can relate an
incident for GPU, an equal number can relay an incident where GPD saved them
instead.
If safety were a big issue with this, we might require recessed, locking
plugs that can't be removed without turning off the power via an integral
switch. (oops, don't want to give anyone ideas ;-)
A nearby hospital has every plug (that I saw) installed with ground pin
up.
As you state below, the standard for right angle plugs seems to be
ground pin down. With this in mind, the hospital must have had a very
good reason for flipping all the receptacles over.
Or the master electrician in charge of that job subscribes to the same
'wives tale' because "that's the way I learnt it!!"
I simply think it [the idea that orientation saves us from falling wall
plates] is a poor attempt to rationalize an old myth. Like so many other
'urban myths'. If there was *really* something to it, by now, it would be
in a standard or code *somewhere*. Anyone ever run across a lawsuit based
on this issue?? If not, considering our litigious society, it must truly
*not matter*.