Happy cake day!
what a year huh ty!!
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.
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
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.
Unionized Kobold electricians. Hmm.
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
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!
Yep. Exactly right.
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.
I don’t understand why it would have female on both ends?
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.
Any serious DIY person can just splice an extra male plug onto a cord faster than driving to the store and reading this sign.
What if I yell “no homo!” when I plug it in?
where are you plugging it in?
I mean, there’s only one place for double-headed items to be safely used and it isn’t in the workshop.
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.
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.
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.
What would they even be used for except to short a circuit?
Some genius won’t pay attention to the orientation of a christmas light display while he’s putting them up, he’ll go to plug them in, and they’ll be the wrong way, so he’ll want an “adapter.”
I will just regurgitate what I’ve heard. I think they are used in case power goes out and you have a generator. You need to disconnect from the power grid first, but it should then allow you to power tour house with the generator. It sounds more like a US thing.
Yes, this would technically work. Although, it would only power the hot leg the outlet is connected to which only feeds part of the house.
It’s very dangerous for a variety of reasons. Especially if you forget to shut off the mains breaker. The transformer can backfeed power down the line at line voltages, creating a shock hazard for lineman or anyone else who might have contact with the line.
Wouldn’t any repair worker ground anything they work on first, or assume it is live? I am not even a proper electrician, but “short-circuited and grounded, or treat it as live” has been the rule forever.
Not an electrician, but I would imagine the danger being if the technician checked the wire was off locally, started work and then the home generator starts feeding mid work.
The only time I’ve ever seen one in use was a friend that had a shed that was powered with lights etc. He had an external plug box on the shed, and would use one of these to jumper from his extension cord to that external plug. It worked, but I shuddered when I saw it.
… and you could easily fix the whole situation by having the shed run a male extension cord out that could be plugged into the generator.
It would also be infinitely more whimsical, since it’d make the shed look like a little appliance with its own chord. Or paint everything and call it a tail, the possibilities are endless.
“Well, let me just plug in the shed real quick”
Connecting this to two plugs on the same circuit won’t short anything unless one of the outlets is wired incorrectly.
They’re used to backfeed power to your house from a generator during power outages. Technically not legal to use, but most people aren’t going to pay $1k for a proper transfer switch. They come with the caveat of ‘not to be operated by fuckwits’ since you can kill a linesman if you don’t flip your main breaker before using them.
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.
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
Sounds like they don’t like gay cords and that’s a hate crime
They have no problem with lesbian cords. Patriarcordy strikes again :(
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
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. 🤦♂️
This shit post is shit
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So what you are telling me is that I can just make one at home?
No.
yeah, that’s some counter-productive signage.
like getting on a bus and seeing:
please don’t
GROPE STRANGERS
Titty squeezy
Yes, but only once.
They cant stop you from buying heat shrink and wire strippers. Don’t let nothing hold you back
you don’t even need heat shrink if you have the good plugs which can be unscrewed open
Nothing can hold me back. Because I am stuck in place by the electricity coursing through my body.
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.
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.
Most of eastern Europe do this and somehow linesmen don’t get killed. I’m not saying it’s the right thing to do but come on, guys, you have to adapt. If your government is shit.
Can’t adapt if I can’t get my suicide adapter.
