“never plug extension cords into extension cords” is probably the most common piece of electrical related advice I’ve ever heard. But if you have, say, 2 x 2m long extension cords, and you plug one into the other, why is that considered a lot more unsafe than just using a single 4 or 5 meter cord?

Does it just boil down to that extra connection creating another opportunity for the prongs to slip out and cause a spark or short circuit? Or is there something else happening there?

For that matter - why aren’t super long extension cords (50 or more meters) considered unsafe? Does that also just come down to a matter of only having 2 connections versus 4 or more on a daisy chained cord?

Followup stupid question: is whatever causes piggybacked extension cords to be considered unsafe actually that dangerous, or is it the sort of thing that gets parroted around and misconstrued/blown out of proportion? On a scale from “smoking 20 packs of cigarettes a day” to “stubbing your toe on a really heavy piece of furniture”, how dangerous would you subjectively rate daisy chaining extension cords, assuming it was only 1 hop (2 extension cords, no more), and was kept under 5 or 10 metres?

I’m sure there’s probably somebody bashing their head against a wall at these questions, but I’m not trying to be ignorant, I’m just curious. Thank you for tolerating my stupid questions

  • lime!English
    319·
    23 hours ago

    lol “gauge”

    americans will use anything except the metric system

      • lime!English
        31·
        10 hours ago

        for cross-sectional area? mm2.

    • Thavron@lemmy.ca
      11·
      17 hours ago

      I’ve always found gauge to be especially odd, because the number gets smaller as you go bigger, so at one point you can’t go any further even though you can go fatter.

        • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
          8·
          14 hours ago

          Yup, I work with 4/0 (0000) cable pretty regularly, for things like generators or powering large systems. We have a few trunks full of cable, and it takes a crew of 2 or 3 to actually lay it because it’s so heavy. Usually one person pushing the trunk along, one focuses on uncoiling it from the trunk, and one focuses on actually laying the cable. We use five conductors at a time (one neutral, three 120v hots leads, and a ground,) so it’s a big bundle. Each cable weighs a little over a pound per foot, and there are five bundled together. So a 150’ coil can easily weigh 750-800 pounds.

    • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
      151·
      21 hours ago

      16 AWG – 1.3 mm^2
      14 AWG – 2 mm^2
      12 AWG – 3.3 mm^2
      10 AWG – 5.2 mm^2

      For us from the civilised part of the world ;-)

      However, as in Europe we have 230 V system, approximately half the cross section, as stated in the table above, is sufficient.