3 ms·
My mom once was getting ready for work and I hear a pop and hear my mom yelling. I go in and her necklace fell off the dresser; a "dust buster" wall wart was p
by linsomniac 6mo ago
My mom once was getting ready for work and I hear a pop and hear my mom yelling. I go in and her necklace fell off the dresser; a "dust buster" wall wart was plugged in back there and it fell across the prongs, shorting it out.
- jkubicek 6mo agoThis is why you always mount outlets with the grounding pin facing up!
- cluckindan 6mo agoHow does that help?
- y1n0 6mo agoIt doesn't.
- linsomniac 6mo agoThe ground pin, when "up", is higher than the hot, so in certain situations it can prevent something from shorting the hot and neutral. Code (?) or convention requires it if you have a metal faceplate, and hospitals require it. People generally like them mounted ground down because then they look like little faces. :-) edit: Not code, just convention.
- kstrauser 6mo agoWouldn't it short hot and ground then, and still turn the necklace into a short-lived fuse? The more practical reason to mount ground down is that wall warts with ground pins or polarized prongs nearly universally arrange them so that they're hanging down when inserted into a ground-down plug. If the plug's flipped, the wall wart's upside down and its weight is trying to lever it out of the wall.
- linsomniac 6mo agoYes, in that case it would short hot and ground, which is effectively the same and hot and neutral, since at the main panel hot and ground are bounded together. But if it were, say, a metal credit card or something rigid, it might just fall on the ground, or could hit the ground and neutral.
- linsomniac 6mo ago... it was an ungrounded plug... Plus it was a chain, so it'd drape across all 3. TBH, in the house I mount them ground down, but under cabinets or in the garage/shop or etc I mount it ground up.
- joshcartme 6mo agoI think ground up commonly indicates that an outlet is controlled by a switch on the wall. It's not code, but I think it's a convention
- linsomniac 6mo agoAgreed, I have seen that.
- enneff 6mo agoThis is why you have modern circuit breakers.
- axus 6mo agoWow, I never knew they could be installed that way; the US standard doesn't say. Now every time I see a new outlet I'm going to check.
- Ekaros 6mo agoOr have sensible outlet design where prongs are always recessed.