Change them back to what you want once you pass

They also appear to come in ivory, if that's any help.

I wish this was not happening to you after planning your color scheme so carefully. If your family situation doesn't require tamper-resistant outlets, could you change them out for the ones you planned and then re-install them before putting the house up for sale?

Very easy fix. Like the above poster said....change them for the inspection and as soon as they leave, change them back. We will be doing the exact same thing with an air gap. We have a soap dispenser there now and when we sell we will replace it with that God-awful air gap which is required. Really no big deal.

haha, that's exactly what I was thinking too .... just change them back. I understand codes are there to protect people, but sometimes I think they have just gone too far.

Codes are to protect people but keep in mind that 95% of homes were built before this code was put in place and there's probably been zero electrocutions where a kid climbed up on the counter and stuck his finger in the outlet up there.

So do they make those that are GFCI? If not how do they handle the code about GFCI near water sources? I can't remember the details of that one, but know you have to have those.

BTW I like the idea of the outlets for a house with little ones. My friends toddler loved taking those covers out so little good they did. All depends on the coordination of the child. Though I think in the backsplash is overkill.

You can use a GFCI circuit breaker instead of having GFCI outlets.

We went and installed those outlets throughout the house -- we love them! I've always hated those other childproof outlet covers (because the only person who couldn't remove them was me, not the toddlers -- ha ha on me!), and these are a breeze to use.

They also come in dark brown. ??? Would that work better with your island?

And, edlakin, isn't your new baby due this month?

Hang on ed...they make a face frame for an outlet that does the same thing...it screws on as a face plate would but provides the same level of protection (and they're easier to replace once inspection is over).

The 2008 NEC requires tamper resistant receptacles to 5.5 feet above the floor. This is obviously arbitrary, because none of the cited supporting statistical evidence for this safety improvement included outlet height information or injured child reach distributions.

Also, I was unable to find any evidence that a cost-benefit analysis such as that which certain Federal agencies have to perform before mandating new safety requirements was performed, much less refined by evaluating outlet height above the floor versus incremental protection cost. The NFPA seem to have adopted the safety hippie slogan: If it sounds good, mandate it.

kas

If it's any comfort to you, we failed our home inspection, too. A six-figure remodel including a 500sf addition, complete kitchen gut and re-do, and about 1000sf of new stamped concrete outside -- and what did he fail us for??? No smoke alarms in the bedrooms -- and the bedrooms weren't part of the remodel and weren't in the plans!!!

Like you, it's a fix we can manage -- but how annoying is that?

I've never heard of tamper resistant outlets. Are they required everywhere in the house? It sounds like that could get expensive.

Does anybody have a link to what these look like. I think I'd like to replace a bunch of ours.

aren't smoke alarms supposed to be just *outside* the bedrooms?

Ed, I failed mine once because my GC's worker thought it would be all right to have non-GFCI outlets -- GC got cranky, he and his dad came back that afternoon and installed the right outlets, and the inspector came back 2 days later and improved my grade.

Can you get custom outlet covers made to match your island from cloudswift's source? I've contacted them -- it's $75 for one outlet cover! yikes! when I do the bathroom countertop work I'll ask that fab'r for a quote.

the government is out of control....we're all too stupid to take responsibilty for our own actions without government intervention

Interesting to see someone else had that smoke alarm thing. We didn't fail inspection over that since the GC knew to do it but I was sure surprised to see some new things installed in my bedrooms when I was having my kitchen remodeled.

I thought it was government intervention over the top but what really PO'd me was when the thing started beeping in the middle of the night to warn me my battery was low. I then realized I didn't have any ladder tall enough to reach the alarm installed on the vaulted ceiling. So I had to sleep elsewhere for several days until DH got back in town - tall enough to stand precariously on our tallest ladder and disable the unit.

I left it permanently disabled - since I feel we're much more likely to injure ourselves trying to replace the batteries - than we are by not having a smoke detector on the vaulted ceiling in our bedroom. We already have them elsewhere. Not to mention I didn't want to be awakened in the middle of the night again and forced out of my bedroom for several days by a beeping smoke alarm.

>>If it's any comfort to you, we failed our home inspection, too. A six-figure remodel including a 500sf addition, complete kitchen gut and re-do, and about 1000sf of new stamped concrete outside -- and what did he fail us for??? No smoke alarms in the bedrooms -- and the bedrooms weren't part of the remodel and weren't in the plans!!!>>

This happened to us, too (I believe you're in San Diego County, right, oofasis? I'm in Poway). Last year - $45,000 addition to the house ONLY a family room - and we failed the final inspection for lack of smoke alarms in every bedroom. I said exactly the same thing to the inspector. That was on Friday, July 27th. That day, I went to Home Depot and bought 3 of the cheapest smoke alarms, because we already had smoke alarms right outside the bedrooms (and 1 in a bedroom already), and installed them myself. When she came back on Monday morning, they were up - but she came when 2 of the 4 bedrooms were occupied by sleeping people. I asked her if she'd take my word for it that I installed all 4 alarms, and told her that my husband was a swing shift worker trying to sleep. So she just looked at two of them and went with that. (I'm glad she didn't press the "test" button on any. One of the smoke alarms didn't have a working battery - the smoke alarm that was already installed.)

We passed the second time, and that afternoon, started gutting the kitchen, for which we did NOT "need" any permits.

DonnaR/CA

lyfia -- Mommy's Helper Safe Plate

Agh, the freaking smoke alarms. We were renovating a house a couple of years ago and had to have 5 smoke alarms, all on high ceilings. They were all wired together, as per code, and wired to the electrical system with battery backup, again as required by code. So for some reason one of them goes off (not a fire, of course, just some random smoke alarm irritation), so they all go off. So we're dragging a huge ladder around this two story house, trying to shut the damn things off, and they won't shut up. We turned off the main circuit breaker to the house, but the battery backup kept them screaming. We had to take them all down and take their batteries out, and STILL they did the little warning beep thing every few seconds (I guess they have an extra battery somewhere inside to warn you that you need to replace your battery, or something). We ended up dumping them all on the front porch, where they stayed, beeping randomly, for quite some time. Safety first!