On October 31, 2018 at 13:47, Ernie Gilman said...
Mac, you weren't any kind of clear in the first post. You asked "is this legal?"
I made a huge leap of faith.
I assumed that if someone techy posts on a techy board about an outlet near a sink that other techy types would get what i was posting about.
Like if i posted a photo of a speaker with the negative marked conductor connected to the positive marked connector on the speaker. I feel like i can just say "looks like someone wired this wrong" without having to explain that YES i know that someone could have reversed it on both ends and YES i already checked to make sure.
Title should have maybe said "half safe" instead of "kind of safe"?
I thought, why, there's no reason you can't have a standard outlet and a Decora outlet behind the same plate.
I thought, well, it's a HORRIBLE color, but it's not so bad as to be illegal. I think we used to call that Smoker's White.
My title about safety made you think about aesthetics?
I thought, that's pretty silly. Obviously the mom and pop hardware store where they bought the parts had somehow picked up a couple of plates that were half Decora and half standard outlet... maybe they got a nickel off for buying that oddball thing.
There was nothing at all about whether the outlet on the left was hot when the right was not.
This doesn't quite make sense. If only the first outlet was installed during construction, a single gang plate would handle the GFI. Adding a second outlet later would have meant drywall work... if there even was a four inch box behind the plate.
My guess is that this has a four inch box behind it with a two gang box cover, so it was originally set up for two devices, and that whoever wired it didn't connect the standard outlet downstream from the GFI as they should have.
