[Symbiote]

I'm only a tourist when I visit places with NEMA sockets, so I'm sure I see much more worn sockets than a resident of America.

But I often find sockets that have a loose grip on heavier plugs, like a phone charger, or a NEMA-CEE adaptor.

(Half my experience is in Central and South America, where maintenance is probably worse — though in Africa old CEE or UK sockets are usually OK.)

[quickthrowman]

Residential grade receptacles are basically complete garbage, always buy commercial spec grade wiring devices at the bare minimum, heavy duty receptacles will last even longer.

Video illustrating the much better device you get for $1.50 more: https://youtu.be/JoL7TzGhMt0

Hospital grade receptacles have extra strong contacts which make it more difficult to remove a plug, but I wouldn’t use them in a home.

[ssl-3]

AFAIK, hospital-grade outlets differ mostly by having an isolated ground. The ground terminals and the mounting points do not share a conductive path, which is sometimes useful in some nuanced ways in hospital environments.

Spec grade tends to go the other direction with that: A lot of these are self-grounding. What that means is that there's a deliberate conductive path between the ground terminals and the mounting points. When properly fastened to a grounded metal box, it can become unnecessary to use the ground screw on the back of the outlet.

Both grip things that are plugged in about the same, in my experience. It seems likely that they share many of the same components inside.

And yeah: Cheap outlets (including "contractor grade") are junk. They take longer to install, they loosen up over time, and they do everything worse. If an house has 50 cheap outlets instead of 50 decent outlets, then someone saved $75 on materials -- but probably paid more than that in additional labor hours. They're reprehensibly stupid.

[quickthrowman]

Ah yeah I forgot about the brass strap ground to box being separate from the pigtail ground terminal to provide redundant grounds, it’s been a while since I estimated any hospital work!

I should know better, HCF cable has redundant grounds for the same reason. NEC 517.13, just got my 2026 code book today!

Thanks for clarifying that hospital and spec grade receptacle contacts hold about as well, I wasn’t 100% sure on that. You’re probably right about the hospital grade and spec grade sharing components, I wouldn’t be surprised if say a hospital grade 20A receptacle had the same exact power contacts as a heavy duty 20A spec grade receptacle.

Are you (or were you) a JW electrician? I’m just an office guy, I learn from the field :)

[ssl-3]

I'm just a geek who studies wires (and anything using them) for fun, and sometimes for profit. I work with wires in some capacity nearly every day. Sometimes low-voltage, sometimes RF, sometimes mains, and seldom fiber. Every now and then I get to bend some pipe or work with tightly-specified systems like Motorola R56.

My grandfather did rural electrification for the power company (bringing light bulbs, motors, and safe electric heat to the agricultural industry) until he retired, so I had good opportunities to get a solid understanding at a very early age.

In terms of licensing and rules: The area of Ohio I'm in has never adopted the NEC for normal residential homes. That means no permits needed for household electrical work, no licensing required, and no inspections -- there's nothing to permit or license or inspect when there are no adopted rules to judge against.

So we've got a much richer DIY culture surrounding electricity here than many places have and we still somehow succeed in not burning down entire neighborhoods.

But that means I don't have a journeyman card. I've never needed one. At home, I follow the NEC even though I don't strictly need to (and I'm frustrated as hell that public standards like this aren't freely available by design). For jobs at work, there's almost always already a preferred electrical contractor and/or staff electricians, and we're not trying to compete in that space. The sparkies and I can chat on like terms and get good things done together, and I think we both finish up these jobs with a bit of new knowledge about the others' trades.

But I did try a written practice test once. A lot of it was very easy for me. The parts that were hard were the bits I've never had to worry about. Like the rules about conduit fill, feeder ampacity, and derating: I know of those concepts well enough to ask the right questions and find good answers, but those are things I never interact with -- they're beyond the scope of what I normally do.

And I could learn those things and understand them and get through the whole test just fine, but then: In order to get a card, I'd also need to work as an apprentice for at least 2 years and that's just not very likely to happen. :)

[Kaliboy]

I live in a Caribbean Dutch island, we grew up with NEMA, being a 127v/50hz distribution network.

They suck. Like you said, eventually everything starts sagging in the sockets.

Recently there's been a trend to switch to 220v based appliances here so modern homes have European plugs instead or alongside NEMA plugs.

It's safer on so many levels. NEMA being 110v means generally higher currents compared to 220v. Then the socket being absolute shit makes it so you often, thanks to gravity, get a situation where you're passing too much current through pins that aren't making enough contact. Followed by fire.