I was reading the paper today when I came across an interesting article about baby proofing your electrical outlets in new homes. It made me think of LipZips wordless Wednesday. Which refer to these:
Here’s what the new code would require:
“The updated code requires new homes to have tamper-resistant receptacles, designed to prevent children from inserting objects like hairpins, keys and nails which could cause them to receive a shock.”
–on a side note, if your child is playing with nails, you may have bigger problems then them being electrocuted!
When I saw this article, I thought of these:
Which we installed in my son’s room, but I have to say, they suck. The plugs always manage to slip out and never stay put.
“The new receptacles have a built-in shutter system that prevents anything from going into just one hole. The shutters will open only if two prongs are heading into the holes at the same time.”
These are permanent fixtures that would go on the wall, it’s designed to prevent kids from sticking more then one thing at a time in the outlet (like hairpins, keys.. or anything metal). They also say that they’ve done research and that kids who are at the “sticking stuff in outlet age” don’t have the capacity to stick more then one thing in each side at the same time. I’m sure there are kids out there who would defy their logic but it’s an interesting concept. At home depot, a cover that we bought was about 8$, that’s quite expensive if you’re doing your whole house, and maybe it was our old electrical outlets or our shoddy installation, but I’m not impressed with ours. Plus we only did his room.
While it’s not mandatory to make these changes to comply with the electrical code, you can still use the little plugs for your old house. However, it was also stated that they’re not ideal. And could you imagine, calling and electrician (which they recommend) to install these covers on all of your outlets? Maybe I’ll win the lottery so I can protect my child. But until then, it will be the little plastic things.
To read the whole article click here.
The new outlets aren’t required for your house as it stands. The code affects new construction and remodeling. The new outlets work differently than the ones you show, the protective part is internal to the outlet itself, and you need to be putting equal pressure in each hole which adds to its safety feature. Can kids get around it, sure I would bet they could.. But you cannot protect against every case. We have some of the new style outlets from when we remodeled, and I don’t find them any harder to use.