Why not have the meters detect and control a disconnect. with all the solar generation around, someone’s gotta have a bad transfer switch somewhere.
Arc-fault breakers are required by code as of now, and it would help this situation quote a bit. However millions of homes don’t have them installed so they’re more at risk.
Reaction time
In the US, using a cord like this will either be harmless or create effectively a dead short. Typical breakers will catch the latter but it will take tenths of a second for a breaker to react in which time the electricity could kill someone.
Depending on circuit conditions a GFCI might intervene as well, they’re typically faster at reacting (needing a few milliseconds) but for a cable designed to handle full residential power, it’s still enough to kill a person in that small window of time
except american standards mandate GFCI only in bathrooms, so you’ll get cooked before anything trips
Joke’s on them I can make one myself
But the paper said you shouldn’t
“this time of year” is 100% christmas.
from people putting up lights, probably trying to run remote power to a box with an extension cord, or because they installed half their lights backward and need this to bridge between the two sets because they rather embrace the danger than redo all the work.
Take it down, darwin demands sacrifice, lest we be riddled with stupidity.
Except that sometimes, those idiots could take people down with them. That electrical fire might spread to another house, and the person getting electrocuted might not be the idiot.
Imagine I’m making the most exasperated, annoyed, disapponted noise possible.
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Today I learned that by being someone’s neighbor, I’m viewed as “choosing to engage with them”.
He didn’t take it to the store and tape it to the shelf so it could NOT be there
K
So what you are telling me is that I can just make one at home?
Yes, but only once.
No.
yeah, that’s some counter-productive signage.
like getting on a bus and seeing:
please don’t
GROPE STRANGERS
Titty squeezy
Sounds like they don’t like gay cords and that’s a hate crime
They have no problem with lesbian cords. Patriarcordy strikes again :(
It’s OK - I’m only going to use the suicide cord for my fractal wood-burning project.
Well at that point all you need to do is cut a normal extension cord and strip the ends. Maybe add a switch or a button for extra safety.
It is written in the book of Leviticus: “It shall be unclean for one end of an electric cord to match the other”
Holy shit, this is what that part in the bible is actually about. People back then just didn’t know about electricity so they thought it was about gay people.
honestly tho. if the Torah is legit its advice should apply to the future too. haShem wouldn’t just have been writing to Moishe’s time.
No gay cords allowed!
The gay cords are extra powerful in Europe with a spicy 230v
1 European gay is equivalent to 1.91 american gays
A former coworker was abroad most of the time. Still, his power meter showed lots of usage during his absence. A tenant in the same house had used such a cord to leech power across the common laundry room.
Now that coworker knew his way about electricity. So instead of the 220V between common and a phase, he rewired his washing machine socket to two different phases, aka 380V, and left for a week.
When he came back, he saw a number of kitchen- and other appliances waiting for trash collection.
3 phase going to a house?
Absolutely normal here. Three phases, now 400 instead of 380V back then, 64A. Standard house connection.
In the States the new standard is 240V @ 200 amps, split phase. Most circuits are half of a phase (120V) but there are 240V circuits for load-heavy appliances like stoves and air conditioning. I’ve heard some people have an extra 240V socket in their kitchens just for tea kettles.
These-phase 400V is the standard house connection here in Europe. Wall sockets are 240V/16A (any phase to neutral), but we also have devices running on three phases, like the oven or the geyser in the kitchen.
Do they put a third of the panel on each phase?
Short answer: Yes.
There are actually so-called “three phase combs” for the fuse panels: Sample Image. You put your fuses on a hat rail (in this case eight fuses, but those combs are available in different sizes), you stick that comb in from below and tighten up the screws. Then you connect the three phases to the connections on the left, or, in some fuse boxes, screw them right onto the bus bars.
That is so clever! I hate working with high voltage but am still fascinated by it.
I have heard there are ways to use these to back feed power from a generator into a house’s system, at least on one breaker, but by definition that bypasses the breaker panel, and the only safe way to use your generator for your house is with a proper cutover installed by an electrician. I can think of literally no other use for one of these cords, except maybe fixing your fuck up if you install Christmas lights backwards.
So yeah, dumb, dumb idea.
I’ve heard the Christmas lights one before too, but I never got it. How do (American) Christmas lights work that you’d need one of these cords?
In North America, Christmas lights usually have a plug end and a socket end so you can connect multiple strings together in series.
If you accidentally put the plug end at the top of the tree, it might be tempting to try to buy or make one of these cords so you don’t have to take the lights down and redo them.
It is as dumb and lazy as it sounds.
So if I understand it correctly, if you were to use this “solution”, you’d leave live exposed prongs on one end of the lights, right?
Cause that would make it even dumber than I had imagined lmao
Yep. Exactly right.
Yup. American Christmas lights basically ARE very thin extension cords with the bulbs (hopefully) wired in parallel. Back in the day they were pretty much all incandescent and in series, and a single burned out bulb meant everything went out and Junior got a joyous new holiday chore!
It also backfeeds the grid and can kill someone working on the lines.
This is the real issue and why you need a modern transfer switch. Lineman is working on the transformer on the pole, “it’s fine we cut it off upstream and I checked” and BOOM anyway
My friend’s house does this with their generator. There is a lockout on the breaker, and the main must be off to move it and open the one that feeds the back porch where they tie the generator in. Once the breakers are cycled, they can plug the generator into the outlet on the porch, and it runs there, sheltered from the weather. When the main power is working again, they turn off the generator, remove the cord, disable the breaker, toggle the lockout bar, and turn the main back on. The particular outlet on the porch is useless when using grid power because of this setup.
So if it’s only for the generator, why is it wired as an outlet, not an inlet?
There are voltage converters (230V<->120V) that have female connectors in both ends. So if DIY guys are playing with tech from other continents.
Any serious DIY person can just splice an extra male plug onto a cord faster than driving to the store and reading this sign.
I don’t understand why it would have female on both ends?
Weird use case. Never underestimate the customer.
Yeah. Makes no fucking sense
I searched that model number, and came up with a similar looking box that has a corded male end- implying that those two stickers are outputs.
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This is all reasonably accurate. Source: electrician, who worked at a supply store for a while. I’ve had people ask how to make all kinds of stupid cords.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t fool with electricity
Unionized Kobold electricians. Hmm.
The problem is that people read a few things on the internet, think they’re now suddenly domain experts, and do it anyway.
Oh I know.
I’ve talked to them.
Don’t do it. If you haven’t actually worked with an electrician for at least two or.three years, just leave the repairs and shit jobs for people like me.
If you can’t explain why the white wire is incorrectly called a neutral in single-phase systems, don’t touch it.
My granpa once assigned a master electrician to make an extension cord after he accidently cut the cable of his hedge trimmer. The electrician built him a male2male cord with the female part on the machine. My granpa almost got electrocuted. 🤦♂️
No idea how and why but my dad once had a cable like that in his workshop.
Short story: we were having a party, bit drunk and wanted power for the bigger speakers, needed an extension, rummaged around and found this one. Of course didn’t check the ends, plugged it in and then thought “oh what a weird male adapter there, lets take it…bzzzzt”.
Have a tiny burn scar on my hand now, luckily nothing else happened. The cable got dismantled afterwards, but I still don’t know why it was there in the first place, he is a pretty good handyman normally.
If you lose power, you can use one of these cables to power your house (or at least, the part of your house on that phase).
This is not how you should do this, but it can work. It is not a good idea (possibly illegal?).
In my jurisdiction, backfeeding your house from a receptacle is very illegal. Transfer switches and interlock kits exist for a reason.
For anyone wondering exactly why it’s a bad idea: Power from your generator can, if your house isn’t isolated from the grid, travel back into the utility lines and backward through the big transformer at the utility pole (so now it’s a few thousand volts again) and give an unsuspecting linesman a nasty surprise. People have died from this. It is a bad idea.
Seems like the power companies should be responsible for either checking there is no back feeding or provide those things for everyone then. (I’m still not advocating for you back feeding your home)
You can’t check for back feeding.
Cable coming from house to pole has no power. Electrician goes to hook up wire. Homeowner puts on generator. Electrician gets electrocuted.
Yes the testing and hooking up could be a small window of time but a fraction of a second after testing is all it takes.
You’d have to constantly test. Just because a lines worker tested that the line is dead five seconds ago doesn’t mean some idiot just plugged one of these in.
They can work, you just need to disconnect your house first then use it. It’s also a good way to burn your house down. If something on the same circuit as the generator pulls more current than the wires in the walls are designed to take, because there’s no breaker in the way anymore it can catch fire.
This is also why solar inverters in most countries MUST be able to ‘island’ (logically disconnect from grid) in order to run a battery.
We don’t have a battery yet, so our inverter shuts down on grid loss. Frustrating as hell when there’s an outage on a sunny day, but i get it.
I have a 50’ (15.25 m) extension electrical cord on a wind-up reel. It has a separate 10’ (3m) cord from the reel hub, to plug into the wall outlet.
All I want is a way to plug it into the wall and be able to unreel it as I work, without that 10’ section getting all twisted. Kind of like a phone cord detangler (pic below), or the brake cable detangler/gyro on BMX stunt bikes.
I was trying to think of a way to make one but apparently it’s a “dangerous fire hazard” or whatever.
Get a regular extension cord, find the mid-point, and feed it through the rollerdrum or duct-tape it on. Roll the cord onto the drum such that both ends are being rolled in the same direction. When finished, you will have a male and female connector readily available from the end of the drum, and uncoiling it will give you an equal length of both sides.
This shit post is shit
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