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I recently remodeled a house (in the US), and installed every receptacle with the ground at the top, because of that.

Every person who comes over that knows anything about electrical stuff instantly says 'your plugs are upside down'...and then I have to explain to them how/why it works :)

The inspector had no issue with it though, thankfully! In health/saftey critical installs (like hospitals), the ground MUST be on top, according to our local code. It's optional for residential.

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Your explanation was likely wrong then, because there's no good reason to install your receptacles that way, unless your faceplates are metal. If they're plastic, then there's no reason for it.

Huh? I thought the reason for putting ground facing up was to prevent metal things from falling in from above and shorting the live and neutral together. What does that have to do with the material of the faceplate?

Because a metal face-plate is the most likely item to fall in there. Especially in industrial places like warehouses and hospitals where there's a lot of stuff rolling around and everything is high traffic.

Really I've found flat materials falling off the back ofdesks to be a pretty common method of shorting said prongs. Even upside down it is still a problem with ungrounded devices like phone chargers.

The reason for putting it ground up is that the vast majority of plug insertions occurs from above, with the plug angled down into the socket. This assures that the ground connector goes in first, as it's at the top, so you get the safety ground before any of the connections are made. It's also a nice benefit that if something were to fall between the plug and the faceplate that it'd hit the ground and not short things (or short to the plate itself if it were metal).

This doesn't seem right to me. Given how the contacts are positioned deep in the socket, they wouldn't be reached if the plug isn't being inserted straight. Plus the ground pin is already slightly longer to mitigate this issue. Do you have a source for this explanation?

We're talking about US outlets here. The contacts are NOT deep in the sockets at all.

They are deep enough that it's not possible to make contact with the live and neutral pins before the ground pin. Try it, I just did and I wasn't able to do it regardless of angle.

I remember seeing a couple places with their outlets installed this way several years ago and seeking out the reasoning at that time. I never liked the way wall warts fall out of "upside down" sockets, though, so when I had to install a bunch of outlets recently I put them all on their sides with the neutral leg "up".

That's not a bad idea either, although I'm sure I'd get even more questions as to why all my outlets were on their sides! Also those 1-gang boxes are more expensive...

> I recently remodeled a house (in the US), and installed every receptacle with the ground at the top, because of that.

Have you run into any appliances or devices that are "optimized" for a ground-down configuration?

Low profile plugs intended to have the cord exit downward at 45-degrees don't work as well with upside down receptacles.

Nothing so far. Most all appliances these days are single-device circuits (in the new kitchen, literally every appliance required a dedicated circuit - fridge, gas range, microwave, ovens, dishwasher, garbage disposal, etc.). So, lots of single-plug receptacles (code says a dedicated circuit has to have a special single plug receptacle here). No issues so far with anything.

My brother in law lives in a fairly recently constructed house, and I commented that one of his receptacles was "upside down". He explained that the electrician did that for the switched outlets so you can tell by looking at them. He then asked if there was anything wrong with it? "Nope, it's actually code in most hospitals to do that, but residential doesn't. Just wondered." It's an interesting way of indicating switched.

Do your wall warts fall off the wall?

AC adapters are rarely 3-prong? If they were, though, I'd expect the to stay in better, even upside down.

They’re not 3-prong, but many are polarized.

I've rarely seen a DC transformer that is also polarized. It's literally a coil of wire passing from hot to neutral. Which way doesn't matter as it's rectified from AC pos/neg to DC +wire -wire.

Usually I find that wall warts falling off is due to the receptacle being "past it's prime" and replacing it takes care of it. I can't think of when I've seen a polarized wall wart, so you can sell place one in the lower outlet facing down, and the upper one has to face up usually because they hang down and interfere with the lower port.

Aside: One regret I have in my kitchen remodel is not replacing all the boxes with dual gang.

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