Hey there! Correction time (and more thoughts!): THHN wire is what’s _inside_ the sheathing of Romex, which is actually classified as NM-B cable/wire. As in, the conducting wires are THHN, the whole thing together is an NM-B cable. Yep. So there’s that. Also, I want to be clear that of the problems we have, this isn’t a huge one. Generally, when things get hot because of overloading, it’s at the connection point and not in the wire. For instance, a lot of electrical fires start at the plug/socket interface either because the connection is poor, there could be corrosion, etc. And sometimes they can happen when nothing is overloaded! This is one of the circumstances in which arc-fault circuit interrupters can save lives. It may well be the case that very few fires are started because of the problem we’re discussing in this video. Especially since outside of certain high-draw devices, the risk of overloading the actual conducting wire is low in the first place. That’s why I am comfortable using them! That said, I remain perplexed that this is an issue we’ve let persist. Most electrical fires aren’t the result of a single thing; they’re a cascade of individually not-great circumstances combining to make a bad situation. In order to reduce the risk of fires, we’ve continually been making the not-great things less bad. That way an increasingly large number of bad circumstances have to align for a fire to happen. Simply put, I think allowing unfused 16 gauge extension cords into the market is a potentially bad link in the chain that we could probably do with cutting out. In fairness, it used to be much worse. 18 gauge (maybe even 20 gauge) extension cords were available many years ago, but we at least had the sense to make 16 the minimum as time went on. However, as I hope I’ve demonstrated here, that can still be problematic. Pulling 20 amps through that cord made it get very hot quite quickly.
Couldn't agree more. Almost nothing in the electrical system in the US makes real sense when compared to the EU or UK standard. Thin wires? Lousy plugs that fall off and expose the bare metal? Good lord there's some much to do.
@@jonathanpinkerton1298 you missed the joke ... none the less . My aunty almost set the house on fire with a extension runned underneat a carpet ... thank god nobody got hurt and only the rug had some burn marks
My in-laws are deaf and, as such, we always have the CC on. I really appreciate that you manually create the CC. it is a noticeable difference when I watch your vids. I love the "Overloadedly Smooth Jazz" at the end.
Funnily enough, today I watched a video with auto-generated subtitles. The person started driving a tank with a ton of tank noise. The subtitles said [music]. Perhaps to some people who prefer Meshuggah :)
If your in-laws ever want to experience music for the first time in their lives again, LCD-4 has been known from deaf war veterans to be able to listen to music crystal clear. to them its worth way more than the MSRP.
This is really eye opening, as a guy who doesnt know anything at all about electricianship. I have always used extension cords to try to distribute the power demand across several outlets. Come to find out, not only are the outlets often drawing from the same supply behind the wall, but the extension cords themselves are more dangerous than an overloaded circuit! This was a real eye opener for me.
I've noticed that every electric vehicle manual in the world says not to use extension cords with them. And I suspect the reason is simply because these cheap extension cords exist and they don't want to attempt to explain to the owner that they need a specific type of extension cord to handle the current. So instead, they just say not to use them at all. Interestingly enough, I know several people that use extension cords with their EVs, I've even been known to do it occasionally. But we all understand how to pick an extension cord with the right size of wire.
That's basically my problem with buying an electric vehicle. There classes of people who cannot safely or efficiently own them. Rental property owners would need to provide ample charging stations for residents. Home owners in neighborhoods without off street parking or more vehicles than space close enough to the building are also screwed.
@@Crazt the US electrical grid .. was made to supply 120 volts to every house ... what would happen if EVRY HOUSE had a 220 volt electrical car charging system ... ( like operating a washer & dryer - every minute of every day ) ... would our electrical grid - as it is now - be able to handle THREE TIMES the power ( if each house had 1 electrical car - but how about 2 electrical cars at each house ) ... the amount of power being delivered to EVERY home in the US ... would BURN up our electrical grid as it was NEVER made to handle 220 volt being delivered to from every home ... 24/7 !
@@Darxide23 ... they use the same 220 volt electrical extension cords BOATS ( over 50 feet ) use to charge their systems while tied up at the dock .... smarter thing would have been to make the "extension cords" ... vehicle specific .
I work at a hardware store. One lady came in complaining her fuses kept blowing. So I sold her more, she came back a week later for more. She had told me she was only using a hot plate. Her friend ran into her. Turns out it was a small range type thing, microwave, coffeemaker and more. It was like everything in her kitchen was running off the same outlet. She wanted higher fuses. I said no it's a fire hazard. "But what if I'm home" no lady it's in your walls. You cannot see it.
@@MrQuicheProductions Being "home" could be worse - if awake there's the 'instictive' move to throw water on it, or otherwise fight the fire and, if asleep, being burned up with the house. At least if one's out when the fire takes hold it's harder for it to kill you.
People asking for higher fuses are the very same people who would sue you even for your underwear if you would give them a higher fuse and their house would burn down.
For my final in my high school speech class I demonstrated making pancakes right in the classroom. To do this I brought in a (rather modest) countertop griddle and, to reach the wall outlet... a flimsy brown extension cord. I didn't think twice about it. ...until partway through the demonstration-speech there was a flash of light as the cord literally melted away from the plug in the wall. We had to get a maintenance guy to come safely remove the now-bare-wire plug from the wall outlet. (He also brought a (better) extension cord, I finished my speech, and got a 99%. And the class got sample pancakes. :)
Spot on. As an electrician I see this all the time. Another thing I run into is people using outdoor rated cords indoors. They think because the extension cord is thicker that it can handle more load. However, it’s still just a 16AWG cord it just has heavier insulation on it to prevent it from cracking in the cold. But used inside it’s like running an extension cord under the carpet, the heavier insulation causes it to heat up more. Heat is what damages the insulation. It caused stress fractures, which causes arcing, which causes heating, which causes fires! So, over heating your cable is what is bad and like you said, that’s why they have over load protection on building wiring. You size the wire to the load and the breaker to the wire. AFCI breakers are used in new houses now to protect the extension cords that are plugged into the walls.
And when it's colder inside then outside your logic is inherently flawed considering room temperature for most months of the year in a lot of states is cooler then outside Temps
Question for the electrician: Are extension cords that can handle 15A or 20A not made? If they exist, is there any reason why they shouldn’t be legislated as the only approved options (similar to anything else that has to pass regs for import & sale)?
@@johnnyc.31 They are made and they do have to have some sort of approval on them like UL or ULC/CSA. But that doesn’t mean that cords or power bars that aren’t approved can’t be sold, your just not supposed to buy them. So make sure if you buy an extension cord or power bar it has the proper approval for your area. If not and it’s starts a fire, your insurance will not cover you. All cords will come with a sticker near the plug end with the information on it. Also, extension cords are approved for temporary use only. Also any appliances you buy that will need to run 15-20 amps will say on it’s power cord “ don’t use with extension cords or power bars “. That’s for their liability. So really power bars are designed for things like your home entertainment system that all together only draws about 5 amps. Extension cords are really for things like running a saw to cut a board that’s short intervals and the cord has time to cool between cuts and gets unplugged and rolled up at the end of the day.
You never met my friend's neighbor. He took the fuses out of Christmas lights and replaced them with a nails or a bit of wire. The reason he did this was "the stupid fuses keep blowing when I plug all the strands in on this run". Yes this man systematically defeated every single fuse in his Christmas lights because he was plugging too many in to each other and was irritated that they kept blowing fuses.
Seriously, I love the line "the only conclusion I feel comfortable making here, is that I don't have enough information to come to a meaningful conclusion." We live in a world, and in particularly on an internet, that is so often devoid of nuance. Combined with a toxic mentality that generally prohibits admitting that you don't know something, and basic levels of communication and debate break down. You're one of the last few bastions of rational discourse and I applaud that. Thank you, Alec.
seriously. I keep waiting for this channel to say something that pisses me off purely because the guy is smart, and he just doesn't ever go there. well, rarely.
Are you saying I shouldn’t plug my space heater into the 50’ 16ga extension cord, of which the excess wire I keep coiled up under my mattress to provide additional warmth??
Life pro tip: you absolutely can! You will even grt a lot of bonus heat very quickly. I did this and my home was warmed to a crisp! My while house was like one big fireplace!
Unless there are more plugs per outlet, I don’t think having more outlet locations will reduce how often people use power strips. Even the simplest TV or computer setup needs more than just two outlets, and if the choice is between running an extension to the next outlet another 6ft away or to put a strip on the closest one, you still run into the gauging issue either way.
If you're willing to spend more money on a good power strip it can be safer than plugging your devices directly into the wall. As mentioned in the video, there is no over current protection outside the walls of the house. If you plug a good power strip in, there is now a breaker outside the walls.
The problem is using a power strip as a permanent way to extend power, i.e. home entertainment, computer, etc, is a violation of NEC electrical code. Thing is there's a disconnect over what people can buy and what they can legally use it for which probably should be remedied
The fact that you cover, in depth, the technology that we all take for granted, and not the new-fangled fancy stuff that everybody can't afford, makes you my favourite tech channel. Thank you
I have so little interest in The Latest In Smart Technology and would much rather hear about the mechanisms of how the things around us operate and the complexity of making appliances function as intended
@@felixc543 case in point: I have the exact same white extension cord at 5:42 with a few devices plugged into it 10 feet away right now. I always thought that was a bad idea, but never knew why. Now I do.
@@jos9569 You saw how long the video was before you even clicked on it, so what made you think you'd be able to glean all the information you wanted in only 3 minutes? Also have you never seen one of this guy's videos? They're pretty consistently longform, which clearly isn't aimed at twitchy, caffeine riddled ADHD sufferers such as yourself.
@@jos9569 idk how you could tear yourself away at 3 min. By then I'm already hooked. You do realize the point of any explanation usually comes at the end. Did you want his conclusion at the beginning?
As somebody who’s been an engineering hobbyist for quite some time now, I can confidently say this guy is the absolute best at dumbing things like this down enough for the average person to understand.
Super important to have the average person understand too. As someone who used to work residential electrical daily, I’ve seen some crazy things with extension cords.
For the most part, he doesn't really understand it, and extremely condescending, this particular video being particularly bad. You don't see it because there are very good production values.
@@nyccollin There are always envious people who like to detract other people's work. They can't be bothered to show how it's done, if they think they can do better. It's much more comfortable to just nag, believing they are "so much smarter".
It could be anti-trip? So that you don't stumble over it and knock it over perhaps. We got an Instant Pot and that was the reasoning it gave in the manual for a short cord.
Yea, when he was saying 6 foot power cords for devices are pretty standard, I was like... most of my devices seem to cheap out and have a 1 meter (~3 feet) power cord, AT BEST these days, lol. All my game consoles (Xbox One, PS4, PS5)? 3 foot power cables. My monitor? 3 foot power cable. My PC's power supply? 3 foot power cable. My HDMI splitter? 2 foot power cable. I really WISH more stuff actually came with a 6 foot power cable at least, lol.
One guy in my engineering group works full time making a model of the electrical system in our plant, ensuring that overcurrent protection is, in fact, appropriate at every level of the electrical system. Another person did some work on extension cords and ended up banning most extension cords, causing grief and hard feelings throughout the plant: only 14 AWG cords with single outlets allowed!
That was dreadful tale from times of begining of mass installation of PCs in ex-soviet organisations. Looks like it is really tempting to shove space heater and kettle to that convinient power strip that come with new PC, and takes some time (especially for older users) to understand that it gets to funny results.
@@SeanBZA On top of that, it's hard to even find a decent pair of jumper cables at local stores now. They seem to only sell the cheap 16, 18, or 20 AWG ones. Anything less and they don't sell it or it's out of stock!
I have to say, the approach you took to explain this issue ("the breakers only protect the wires in the walls") is SUCH A GREAT way to frame the problem. How an explanation is framed is one of the most important parts of good explanations, and you do that really well in general. But I think it really shines here. Kudos!
Yeah I was surprised to learn how many people thought the fuses/breakers were for their safety than to stop the wires melting, when I studied electrical engineering. It was eye opening seeing so many first years that thought it would trip if they were earthing the phase
Hi. I ask around to see if someone would be interested in a lil Project of mine. Some people try to be the 180 Degree Opposite of Cancel-Culture and try to help UA-cam become less... well, lets say 'Messy' to use nice words only... ... Interested to hear a bit more?
@@ravenouself4181 I dont know how to say it more simple than: I have a Good-Cause-Project that costs no money and little Time; wanna hear more about how to help UA-cam become less hate-filled and sex-sells-filled? It is, obviously, not a MIRACLE WONDER Solution, but who needs that? It worked enough in the Testing (by me) so that i know ask around if someone wants to also do it.
After my Grandfather died we cleaned out his workshead. That’s when we found out he “wired” it with extension cords. Not too bad, just a workshead... Until the house he had with my Grandmother needed an updated breaker box. That’s when the electrician found my Grandfather also wired parts of the house with extension cords. Behind the walls.
To be fair, there's nothing wrong with using extension cords for wall wiring. So long as it's the correct wire gauge and meets the thermal requirements (which might have to be derated because the wires are physically closer together) then it's fine. It will probably work out more expensive than bulk wire meant for in-wall installation though. Also I'm assuming you're just talking about the wire, with the plug and socket chopped off the extension cord. If you mean the plugs and sockets on the extension cords were used to connect them then that's much less safe, due to corrosion and the plugs potentially working their way loose over time from vibration/movement nearby.
ShittyLifeProTips: Enable circuit breaker protection on underrated extension cord by tying a knot on the wires! Once the insulation soften, the conductor may contact each other and make a dead-short, tripping the breaker. The molten PVC smell, along with the spark will give you both smell and audiovisual alert as well. What else can you ask for?
That's a horrible idea. Circuit breakers aren't perfect. You're still asking for a house fire. Might as well sleep with oily rags in a room with lit candles.
surprisingly thats how the majority of circuits i encounter as an electrician go bad, when the wiring was installed someone got carried away with the hammer while stapling the wire and while it worked fine for lighting and small appliances. apply a larger load and boom instant short circuit with no way to fix it except run a whole new circuit. you also come across it a lot in remodels where wires are moved around and get pinched or are bent back and forth many times before the job is done.
19:48 "I don't have enough information to come to a meaningful conclusion." - Thank you so much. This sentence should be the go-to-answer of so many people, yet they decide to blurt out their ignorance. You don't. Again : thank you.
I’v never understood… Why people make shit up or try to explain ideas they don’t even understand. Saying the words… I DONT KNOW!!! Is one of the best feelings! Because it absolving yourself, and then you might just learn something in the process!
'I don't know' / 'I don't have enough information to come to a meaningful conclusion' should be taught in schools. It's an honest sign of intelligent thought. Superb channel!
That flimsy brown extension cord brought back bad memories of childhood. Think the scene in “A Christmas Story” where the dad plugs in the light set, it sparks and catches fire. Yup, fill every plug with instant high draw electronics and wonder why it sparks and pops.
I always thought it was because a coil of wire is essentially an electromagnet and current passed through it will cause a magnetic field, which can be problematic depending on what else is close to the wire (remember that a moving magnetic field can induce current in another electromagnet nearby - AC voltage would cause exactly that) It might be both, but for high voltage AC specifically it might be more of a heat issue. The same rule also applies to data carrying cables because of the interference the magnetic field can cause.
@@Jdbye it’s not even things near the coil that’s the problem - a collapsing magnetic field resists changes to current, and AC current means the field is constantly building up and collapsing. You effectively de-rate the wire to be able to handle less current by keeping it in a coil, because the building/collapsing magnetic fields generate more resistance than if it was uncoiled. Some wound extensions (in the UK, at least) actually have two amp ratings, a lower one for if it is coiled and a higher one if it is uncoiled for this reason.
@John Jenkins that’s partly true, but it’s definitely primarily because it de-rates the cable to being able to handle a lower amperage due to it acting like a choke.
After watching this video, I went and inspected my extension cable running my window mount AC unit in my bedroom. I had never considered the extension cord gauge size on the cord I was using for my AC (it was a super cheap one). Sure enough, it was nice and warm. Ended up buying a nice thick (I cant remember the gauge, maybe 14?) extension cord specifically to run my AC unit. Thanks for possibly saving my house from burning down!
Yeh. Its probably not that big of a risk; I suspect if american homes burned down all the time due to this, it wouldve changed. And while I live in europe, with more power in the outlet, super thick power cables are also the standard. Still made me switch out the quite old extension cord I use for my PC/desk with one with fuse and full outlet specification. Doesnt hurt to be safe.
@@termitreter6545 actually the higher voltage allows for thinner wires to carry the same power. Because Watts are Volts*Amps, you only need half the current for the same amount of power.
@@wta1518 Huh, I havent even considered that voltage and current might have different effects on reistance. So thats probably also why (vaguely speaking) amperage is more dangerous to humans than voltage, isnt it? Thanks, learned something new today. Imma go googling electricity stuff now :D
@@termitreter6545 Well, no. Voltage difference allows current to flow. For safety from electrocution, both are important. For the subject of the video, which is mainly heating, there are other effects that are important. First there is direct heating of the wire from the current flowing through it. Second, the conductance of the wire changes with temperature, conductance goes down with increasing temperature in copper. This means that the more the temperature goes up, the worse with wire conducts and the more the wire looks like a resistor. As the wire conductance goes down (and the resistance goes up) then more of the total circuit power is dissipated in the wire rather than in the applied device ( such as a toaster). So more toasting happens outside the toaster and more in the supplied wiring. Eventually the plastic insulation melts and the conductors can short directly to each other.
The pre-wash in the dishwasher has actually made such a huge difference. I just used cheap generic cleaner for the pre-wash and then better pods for the maineash. Still kicks ass.
On the 'safer/less dangerous' linguistic quirk. I've run into a similar problem with 'feeling better'. Because if you're sick or injured, 'feeling better' can mean 'back to normal' OR 'still bad, but not as bad'.
yeah that's when I feel I have to throw in "feeling a bit better," but that's more over text. spoken, the tone tells exactly whether you mean feeling good again or just less bad
any time there is a need to convey a scale, and a comparator word (specifically when the other end of the comparison is not stated, ie "better than what, and by how much?") is used to denote a place along that scale, this issue will arise. When this exists, there is a generally agreed upon scale, but there is no objective scale, so different people can assume different scales. this is basically a more all-encompassing way to restate what Michael Kortsen said, but the point in doing so is to emphasize the need to point out that a scale is assumed, and that by clarifying what that scale is, there is no linguistic confusion. the issue is that people hate unnecessarily long sentences or phrases, hence the backlash on euphemisms, so really we should just replace "I am better" with something like "I am unsick" since there is no other simple word to describe overcoming an illness of your own accord
@@vidiot5533 unsick is an amazing word, but no longer sick and now in good health also work. Sickn't is my personal favorite with friends though. There's also recovered, if you need a serious yet not wordy way of conveying "though I was sick I am no longer in that state"
Hi Alec. During my career I developed and taught electrical training classes covering the NEC (NFPA70), Electrical Safety (NFPA70E) and Power Engineering and I have to tell you this was extremely well done. You covered many fundamentals of wiring and thoroughly explained a few of the hazards. Excellent content and context. I don't know how you research your material but you extracted critical details that aren't obvious and not well understood by the general populous. Great job, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Electrical extension devices usually sell for under $10, so no one's even going to notice the additional cost of a fuse.The government shouldn't even have to be involved.
exactly my thoughts! Very cohesive. I’m still an apprentice so this was fun to listen to decoding something i didn’t even realize fully! Love this trade for that reason. i’m always learning. now i’m looking at everything i’m using around my house now 🤣
I’m a general contractor, I’ll be having my non electrical employee’s watching this..... this is a very well executed general explanation of US electrical circuits . Great channel!! 👍👍👍👍
Yup, and we install the recepticals upside down...cause it make a face? The ground pin is supposed to be up, so if something conductive falls into an plug not fully inserted, it doesn't short out. I don't know, like the metal fish your busy us holding onto and slides down the wall, hitting the extension cord and zap.
@@blaircox1589 The fact that it was done that way means that most wall warts and other things are designed with the expectation of the ground down. Having it up, as is required in many commercial settings, can be a pain for residential devices.
@@MadScientist267 triggered, LOL Both ways have pros and cons, neither is right or wrong, but there is a higher probability of something conductive touching exposed prongs than an index finger on the bottom. Other than that, it's purely cosmetic and following what everyone else does as 'normal'.
i dont know how it is in other countries, but over here where i live (Germany), every extension cord has their maximum wattage imprinted somewhere in the plastic case. every one i own/used so far, is rated for 16A at 230V, that is our standart circuit braker size for houses
Same in Sweden. But the max wattage isn't really that important, since all the cords must handle 16A, so one will comply knowingly or not. In Sweden, also all new electrical installations use not only overload circuit breakers, but also "ground failiure" breakers. (I think though you can have some wiring bypassing that for very certain purposes.) I'm not sure - I live in an old house - but I think it is very unusual that electrical outlets will support more than 10A before the fuse breaks? So extension cords are then also always overdimensioned. I think a lot of this is actually EU regulation these days. At least the extension cords and such, have to comply to EU standards, and have a "CE" compliance hallmark to show that.
@@andersgrassman6583 yeah, lots if eu rules nowadays. We have ground failure breakers as well. A few years ago, they were only required in bathrooms, but nowadays, they are usually installed everywhere
And every Extension cord has to have Minimum 1,5 mm² Kabelquerschnitt, ITS frankly bonkers that the us is at least 50 jears behind (No gfci in every circuid for example)
I'm 70 seconds into the video and already, I can't wait any longer to share this story. My mother sleeps with a heating pad underneath her. One time she was taking a nap when she heard a pop and fizzle. The outlet by her bed had blown and left behind some soot. She had her heating pad plugged into a power strip plugged into one of those dinky extension cables, which was plugged into another dinky extension cable at the other end of the bed, which was plugged into the outlet that had just blown, the one that was right next to her readily available to receive the heating pad directly, the one that she couldn't access because she stuck her highly flammable nightstand in front of it. Narrowly avoided a house fire that could've been prevented entirely if she didn't needlessly daisy chain extension cables. EDIT: Thanks for mentioning the fearmongering. Based on the rest of the video discussing the wire itself overheating I'm not sure if pop-fizzle is relevant here. I still stand by my mother being a complete idiot.
Yeah. Alec could have mentioned how the brass connectors in power strips do NOT conduct electricity as well as the copper making up the cable. So daisy chaining power strips with the second strip plugged into the 6th outlet on the first can cause significantly more heat than having the second strip plugged into the 1st outlet. The difference is the entire load of the second strip flowing through 12 inches of brass instead of 2.
This person has also done a very good explanation on contactors and even went on a tangent about HVAC, which as someone who is in school about HVAC, and also who likes electrical-related things, appreciate his videos :)
The tech who installed the heat pump at my place needs to under more about brakers... they double taped the feed lugs from the pole up stream of the master braker. If the compressor goes locked rotor then the braker at the power plants the first line of defense. Log cabin was built in 1904 and was last updated in the early 70's, time to bring it into the modern eara.
This is funny because my school dance was actually evacuated due to whoever set things up, deciding to use one single outlet to run all the stage lights, speakers, projectors, and led panels. Sure enough, there was a fire in the school gym and the dance was canceled.
This was a very important point- I run a christmas lights drive thru park, and we use a DIY extension cordage that is also 20g and you can cut to length and attach male/female plugs as needed. I have incidentally overloaded a few of these and they literally burn up at the connections. By dumb luck, Ive not started a fire, and now I know better. But my parents did start a house fire with a bad powerstrip running ozone machines and a fan. Be careful out there folks!
I think the ozone machines are the greater danger. Ozone is a dangerous substance and should be avoided! They don't call it carcinogenic, but they do list it as mutagenic. My college professor gave us hell because he could smell ozone coming from our experiment.
This video should be required viewing for all homeowners. I’m a Master Electrician, but I learned and was reminded of several very important t facts. Thank you!
Thanks to LEDs, apart from kitchen appliances, the only things that can cause overload these days are vacuums, space heaters, and hair dryers. Those are always kept below 1200 watts, usually running 1100 or less, making them safe (alone) in all but the cheapest extension cords. Hair dryers and vacuums almost always have sufficiently-long cords, so it's really just space heaters, which are already a fire hazard themselves, and only if someone plugs in other things to the same cord. Or uses a really old one, I guess. I guess desktop PCs can get pretty power-hungry, but no one would plug a 1000-watt PC into an extension cord. That's a high-end gaming rig, it's going into a surge protector if not an UPS.
@@Ibrag91 A PC that actually draws 1000W is very rare. Having a 1000W PSU doesn't mean it ever draws that much, a modern high draw PC can draw around 700W when under extreme load.
EXCELLENT video. I'd like to add: - 6 ft accessories require outlets every 12 feet, not every 6, since you get 6 to the left, and 6 to the right of the accessory - fire marshals HATE chained extension cords - overloading extension cords also softens and melts insulation in the cord, and can lead to an arc and sparking, which ignites stuff (I've had a hair dryer cord IGNITE while I was drying my hair due to the cord softening at the dryer, so like RIGHT by my hand) - fuses in 120vac plugs used to be common (I still have a few here, most are made of *bakelite* and use the bigger glass fuses) - using an extension cord as a splitter isn't really all that economical - a super cheap 5 outlet power strip costs about the same as a standard 3 outlet extension cord and I LOVED your 100mph analogy for "safer"
@OP When I moved into my house, I found a nifty splitter in the garage. It's a nice plastic box with six outlets that will accommodate grounded plugs. It is designed to be mounted (by screws) to a regular duplex outlet. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to actually fit on any of the outlets in my house. My house was built in 1939. While it has a circuit breaker box rather than glass screw-in fuses and has 24 circuit breakers for a six room house, I do limit the number of things I operate in the kitchen at one time.
On the first point, you also have to account for the vertical distance and distance from the wall. By the time you get there, having six feet between sockets is probably about what is reasonable to pretty much always reach with a six foot cord while retaining reasonable slack (thinking a table lamp, about two feet up and one foot in).
This video stopped a near fatal mistake! It literally saved my neighbors and my family from a potential fire do to my negligence🥺 You see I live in an apartment building, earlier in the day I brought home our Betta fish from work to care for him, I was tired while setting him up the socket I was planning to plug his filter and heater into already had a lamp plugged into the top and My cats water fountain plugged directly into the bottom part of the socket, I grabbed a cheap extension cord we had lying around I made an ignorant mistake by unplugging the cats water fountain from the wall socket then plugged it into the SAME cheap extension cord as the fish's equipment 🤦🏻♀️ later I was in bed when I came across this video after I watched it I got up one last time to check on the fish I thought 🤔 Maybe I should check the warning tags on the fountain and fish equipment, The water fountain plug was already VERY HOT and was starting to smell like burning plastic I immediately unplugged everything. If it wasn't for this video It wouldn't have crossed my mind to check the warning tags on the plugs😳 It makes me feel physically sick what could have happened to not only to my family but other families that live in our apartment building. 😳
HOLY CRAP, tell EVERYONE you can so they don’t fall into the same trap, PLEASE! Now I’m very worried someone else in your apartment may fall in the same trap and inadvertently (and criminally) burn the whole place down! Please, for the love of God, stay safe, especially your cats!! 😬😕
@@4450krank there will always be some level of heat in power cords being used. just check the amps they allow for and determine what you have plugged in. If its a 12 amp cord and youve got a lamp or light use item plugged in your fine. Basically you can use a 12 amp cord on a 15 amp outlet....you just need to make sure whatever your plugging in doesnt pull more than the 12 amps though. Which most things wont come close. heaters, blow dryers, vacuums and other high power appliances are really the only risk on those things.
I responded to a fire that was caused by a space heater in a porch with an extension cord run under a carpet. Probably one of the ones you were showing. It was an old couple preparing to go away for the winter. They had a checklist of things To Do to the house before they left it alone. unfortunately the last thing on the list was to turn off the electrical panel. By the time they realized the fire started, the front door was like tripled dead bolted. the only remaining exit was through the back porch where the fire started. It was not a great situation but everyone's survived.
or the average ignorant consumer would be like "16 is a _bigger_ numberthan 14, it must be *_better!_*" 🤣 (of course if there were even any 14's on the shelf to compare too)
Good job highlighting this problem. There was a fatal fire in my apartment building many years ago caused by a space heater plugged into a thin extension cord. An elderly tenant and her dog died. RIP Helen.
Bedankt. You know how to turn absolutely boring subjects into interesting videos. And suddenly the subject is not boring anymore! You're great, keep up the good work.
THATS FUNNY!! I am a utility infrastructure inspector for a City, we don't right up an issues as a hazard, we call it a potential risk.... Keeps the attorneys and OSHA of our backs when something does go wrong
"Kitchens are usually designed more smartly to avoid this." Let me introduce you to my house, where when I moved in if you used the microwave and toaster at the same time, a breaker would trip that covered the kitchen, 3 bedrooms, a hallway, and one bathroom. (yes, I have fixed the wiring after discovering this)
My office kitchen has one single circuit breaker for every plug in there (6) outside the fridge. You try to microwave or toaster oven or even plug in something random like a projector while the coffee maker is on (which is always, let's be honest here, it's an office) and the breaker trips. It is the stupidest design ever for a room.
this reminded me, at one point one of the light switches in my bedroom would trip a breaker and the entire house's power would go out. my parents didn't know about it at first, so whenever they'd make me mad id flip the switch
Yes, I'm commenting on a 2yo video... just found the channel and have been binging it. Love the way you make the most mundane and sometimes irrelevant to my life topics, if not interesting, pleasant to listen about :P While the "distance to closest outlet" issue is also being tackled across the pond (central Europe citizen here), the issue of the number of outlets per room, and often times their location, is frankly braindead. In today's world, in a modern home, nearly every room has about half a dozen electrical devices, plus at least half a dozen mobile ones across the home (the vacuum, a phone charger, a fan) and yet it's very common for most rooms to have 1 or maybe 2 double outlets and call it quits. And it's not like all household devices ride the line right up to overpowering the circuit of a single outlet, especially since as you mentioned the outlets tend to be chained within the wall anyway. A lot of apartments buildings are built with small rooms, hence the distances are small, but so is the number of total outlets available. And when you consider that many fairly basic things in any given room require electricity, a power strip becomes pretty much a necessity. I can't imagine trying to plug in a multi-screen PC office without either extension cables or a power strip. If we're talking a router and maybe even the speakers with a dedicated power supply, that's easily 4-6 plugs, and in a small-ish room, I might only have 2 available. I have the same issue with just having a tv, some basic home cinema, a blue ray and a PS4... that's 4 plugs, and unless I set it all up in the middle of the wall, I'll need a cord to reach one or the other of the double outlets.
I am from Poland and there is similar problem in Poland with the number of outlets. But to be honest even if I had 15 outlets in my small room I would be a little bit wary of using them directly. I am kinda used to plug all my expensive electronics only via plug strips with EMI and RFI filters and overvoltage protection, to protect my electronics. Maybe in modern installation there is no need for them, but having a single button to cut off few appliances connected is still neat and it gives some placebo effect (but I am still one of those who if leaving house for more than one day will unplug all the non-essential electronics). The one problem I have noticed, sometimes people buy just cheapest extension cords with a switch believing it has some kind of protection on board, but it fact it would be better to connect directly to the socket in the wall.
One of my high school teachers had a power strip plugged into another power strip, which was plugged into a laptop cart along with a printer, and that cart was plugged into a 3 outlet splitter along with a projector, which was then converted from 3 prongs to 2, which was then plugged into a 25-foot 2-prong extension cord, which was then coiled up and plugged into an outlet 2 feet away.
@@nikkiofthevalley Luckily none, and I ended up re-wiring it for her. Our school had occasional fire marshal inspections, though, and I'm guessing if he had seen that she would've gotten an earful.
So she had a laptop, printer, and projector. About 200 watts total. That’s nowhere near the carrying capacity of the extension cords, so where’s the danger? They weren’t overheating.
My only question is why she had 3 extension cords in a row (laptop cart + power strip + power strip). Just for simplicity, it would have been better have 1 long one.
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams
What I missed in the video, was the fact insulation detoriates with temperature AND TIME. What that means is that you can 'overload' a wire and think that everything is fine. It may get a little warm, but it seems to work. However, the longer you do that, the worse the insulation is. After three years (time) your margin of safety is gone ... and if you are lucky you will smell the insulation smoldering before the fire starts. EXPERIENCE.
Years ago I was sitting at a piano bench with a floor lamp about three feet from me. The cord had deteriorated and it started arcing at the lamp end. The arc followed the cord and in less than a second flames where well above the bottom of the curtains by the outlet. (Seemed like two or three feet high to me.) I jerked the curtains away, but the arcing did not stop till it reached the outlet. At which point it self extinguished. The coiled pattern of the cord was clearly visible on the hardwood floors. There was no time to "smell" anything. I think an ARC FAULT breaker might have triggered, but such things did not exist, at least at the residential level then. In my opinion, if I had not removed the curtains, or if the floor had been carpet, a major fire would have occurred in less than 3 seconds. Insulation failure is a biggie to me. But then, that is not what this video was about, and one video can't cover everything.
@@grn1 for a few dollars you can buy a new outlet at home depot. Plenty of instructional videos online that show how to change it. You'll want to cut off any burnt wire and don't forget to turn off the breaker first. A voltage meter and electrical pliers are good to have. I'm not an electrician, I taught myself and have done lots of small jobs like that. Tell you're landlord to fix it or you'll do it if they take $100 off rent. An electrician would probably charge $100 just to show up.
Just had a 30 amp 240v circuit catch the insulation in my wall on fire. Turns out, there's a junction box behind the wall used as a splice point. The breaker run is aluminum.... and that was twist tied to copper, then down to the outlet. The wire splice caught fire inside the junction box, then spread to the insulation and up the wall. Was awake and caught the smell before it became real bad. Fire department was less than 5 minutes away. Aaaaaaaaand.... breaker (30A) DID NOT trip.
Videos like these make me aware of things I will later know but be unable to fully and articulately explain to people irl. Kinda like I regularly have to google the joules in a lightning strike to prove to people that a circuit breaker would not, in fact, protect your tv from a lightning strike.
Our country is a fucking depressing cold wet shit tip that needs to sink back into the ocean from which it rose but at least our plugs aren't pure death
As a dutch, I'm like 'why do they use extension cords for mains' and 'how do they get power, return and earth wires all together in such a tiny package'
That man always comes up with the best alternative names for shitty equipment. And remember, don't stick your pinkie where you wouldn't stick your dinkie.
@@PimpMyDitchWitch He does it so often and so casually and consistently that when I introduced my friend to AvE, my friend thought at first that AvE had a speech impediment.
Good thing I'm living in Germany. Over here, every household circuit is rated at 16A, circuit breakers are dual-purpose (overload AND short-circuit) and you're not allowed to put an extension cord into market that doesn't fit the wiring standard (i.e. certified for 16A). The only thing remotely dangerous is coiling, since (and he doesn't really explain that in detail) coiled wires are just that, coils. And coils have induction, which raises the resistance. Luckily the overload safety in the circuit breakers reacts to that before the wires overheat.
@Scotty secretly loves Chryslers "Scotty" doesn't sound like a name usually found in ovens so you should be safe. Also, why keep your love a secret? Chryslers are great!
Love your discussion about "safer" at the end. Sometimes, people assume things in black and white when a topic is a spectrum. 2 things can be horrible, but 1 has to be "better" than the other. The fact that (a) is better than (b) does not imply that (a) is "good". People sometimes misinterpret that.
Getting shot by a .22 is safer than getting shot by a .50 cal. This does not in any way imply that getting shot by a .22 is safe. Another consideration, safer also does not need to mean significantly better. Like if thing A is 5/100 safe and B is 6/100 and C is 95/100 then: C is safe B is safer than A B and A are dangerous
I find the main case where people take the comparative to mean the superlative is with the word "better". If I was super sick yesterday somebody could ask me if I'm feeling better. If I say yes they think I'm feeling -good- well.
I wonder if the interpretation is regional. My understanding of "safer" is exactly as he described, but I live relatively close across the border. I'm curious if "safer" is interpreted differently across the pond.
friendly reminder to all young musicians: SHILL OUT FOR THAT 14 GAUGE EXTENSION CORD, you'd be amazed how easy it is to overload a normal cable with an amp or lighting rig. especially if you decide to use a splitter
@@johnn3542 Indeed. I dont think he mentioned length in relation to amperage. The common cut off is 0-50ft 20a and 51-100ft 15a for 12 awg. One of the best things you can do is feel the cable and connections with your hand after they have been under load for a bit. The cables simply not making a good connection happens quite often.
@@rdooski Home Depot has some nice soft rubber easy to coil 12 gauge "Rigid" brand in black SJOOW extension cords. Decent price too, if you are into sound, these are the way to go.
Old house was using electric that was not updated since 1972. Dishwasher was running while I made a pot of coffee. Long story short, dishwasher fried coffee machine fried and dishwasher outlet had small fire.
A general note on the American Wire Gauge system: the thickness of the wire corellates to the method of making wire, in that it is drawn through a die, the more times it passes through the die, the thinner the wire. Hence why 12 gauge wire is thicker than 14 gauge and so on.
Wait... So wire gauge is not connected to your rifle / shotgun 'gauge'? In that so many pellets / wires could fit in a certain diameter? The more I learn of U.S. measuring systems the more convoluted it gets. And I thought us Dutchies were great at generating bureaucracy.
@@FroggyMosh rifles don't use gauged rounds, only shotguns do. and shotgun gauges mean how many equal sized balls at that gauge can be made with 1 pound of lead. thus, a 20 gauge is smaller than a 12 gauge. IE; 1 pound of lead can make 20 equal sized balls the size of this gauge, but only 12 of this other gauge.
This is so typically American: Lets name something for the manufacture process instead of the end use or immutable property, that won't be confusing at all for people outside the industry.
You should see what crazy wiring jobs people have made as a DIY project here. There's plenty of videos on electricians coming across somebody's insane wiring job.
@@KeoniPhoenix Back in the 70s when my parents bought their first house, they found some genius had wired the porch light with _speaker wire_ -- those really _thin_ double-wires with no plugs, meant for connecting speakers to a stereo system.
Hey man, I'm an electrician and use your videos just to satiate my need to just listen to things I'm interested in (sometimes background noise and I don't, admittedly, really learn anything more than 10% of what you say) and I have this conversation every week, and you put it better than I do, and I listened 100% this time as it pertains to my career and area of expertise. You did a damn good job here, and I will be using this link to explain it to people that don't understand my nomenclature.
I hear you. I was an electrician for over 40 years and away from the job nobody wanted to talk about electricity. Every day when I got home from work my wife would ask what I had done that day. I would tell her and she would get upset because she didn't understand. One day I said I'll teach you the basics so we can talk about it. We sat at the kitchen table for about two hours with me trying to explain OHMS law. She finally through her hands in the air and said I'll never ask you about electricity again.
@@sparkywatts3072 I only did electrical for a few years, but I would get chewed out "why did you buy that expensive extension cord". Well cause we are powering a an amp hungry appliance and I want a cord that can take it. I taught my family that if an extension cord is getting to warm either find another outlet or a thicker gauge extension cord and keep it long enough to what you need, but not too long and get a fused surge protector.
it has been at least 75 years( maybe longer) that the "N.E.C." has required receptacles be placed 12 linear feet apart from each other. the only time I use an extension cord, it to operate a hedge trimmer!!!!.
Love this channel. The other nice byproduct of fuses is, because they are rated in amps, they tend to teach the layperson what 'current' even is (at least, on a basic conceptual level.)
I was a signal electrician on the railway in Australia which used 110/120 volts in most situations. When I was an apprentice we dared each other to hold onto it. It was pretty strong but tolerable. I’ve also had 240V hits and the difference is like being chewed on by a house cat and being mauled by a tiger.
Lol, yup. 120V tingles. I've zapped myself a few times and once in recent history it was *zap* "hmm that felt weird" BIL:"Ya you zapped yourself" Me:"No, like it felt weird, shoulda tingled more" Went down to the basement to a junction box and low and behold there was a break in the wire so that 14ga was more like a 22ga(based on the area still making connection).
Definitely! I've only been hit by 240V once, and that was all I needed to forever remind me to quintuple check every breaker box before working on anything. 120V was bearable if I forgot to test a switch or receptacle after turning off a breaker, but I ain't risking that again
Got zapped with mains voltage while taking apart an electric chainsaw having forgotten to unplug it. It was the weirdest sensation having to manually realise "hey I'm being shocked I need to move my hand" since my reflexes didn't pull me away.
@@mannmanuel7762 yeah it’s massive. I got 240v from one hand to the other hand through my heart cutting through old wiring that I thought I had disconnected but the supply was coming from somewhere else. Thankfully it was just a short touch.
Remember when household appliances actually came with long cords so you didn't have to use an extension cord? Now, even though there's more outlets, the household appliance cord is maybe 2 ft long.
But if your appliance had a 6ft cord a small child could get ahold of it and pull it off the counter on themself. Then you'd have to take some personal responsibility to make sure that didn't happen...and we all know it's easier to just sue a company for letting that even be a possibility.
I love older houses, but the good thing about new houses they put more than one outlet in each room. If there is a wall, it should have an outlet, or two.
As a firefighter, I love your use of FLIR for the visual demonstrations (especially at 11:46). I think the only saving grace these days is the push for energy efficiency, which *can* put less load on things like extension cords. Strands of incandescent C9 Christmas lights could easily overload a cheap extension cord, whereas LED C9 lights draw just a tiny fraction of the amps that incandescent do. Of course, greater awareness of UL Listing and other fire safety tips help as well.
I don't know if you've been in it long enough. But has there been a reasonable decrease in house fires in the last 20 years? Just from the efficiency in modern things, TVs, av, lights, / other stuff
What makes this channel so great is not just the entertainment value and snarky host, it’s the fact that he is able to clearly deliver the script in a way that appears as though there is no script and he’s speaking naturally as if there was no script. It’s a very rare and valuable skill I wish all channels had.
I still cant believe we can still buy this crap here in the US. At least all of the DIYers I know including me are smart about buying really nice extension cables.
Not really true. Here in Australia our extension leads and power points are typically 10 Amps / 2400 Watts, but the circuit and breaker are at least 15 or 20 Amps. So, you can overload the socket, and the extension lead without blowing the circuit breaker in the "fuse box". You do have to use double adapters to do it though, because power boards all have 10 Amp circuit breakers, and no single device should draw more than 10 Amps.
@@PeterJacksonOfAdelaide The fact that Australia works on 240V also helps. At the same wire gauge, you can safely suck twice the power without overheating the wire. With safe plugs/pins, you don't get that much risk of electrocution (arching still may remain a problem. Ah, yes, and driving nails into live power cables when installing insulation during a global financial crisis, but we don't get those that often... do we?)
I dunno what the actual rules are here in northern Europe, but I've checked all my extension cords, and they're all rated for over 3500W, no matter how cheap the brand is, or how many outlets it has. That's roughly 15 ampere at 230V. Having more than a 16A fuse on your circuit is pretty unusual here. Most are 10A or 15/16A. 20A is rarely used except for outlets you expect to put high-powered stuff on. Even then, with our extension cords being rated for 3500W, you'd almost need to actively try to overload them. Even if I attached my TV, three consoles and two desktop computers with their monitors to the same extension cord, I wouldn't get close to 3500W.
Literally came across one of these today...without my phone...without saying a word...but thinking this thing's dangerous...and yet somehow UA-cam decided today is the day I should rewatch this video 😵💫
A helpful way to understand why gauge numbers seem to be backwards (as in a smaller # means bigger wire) is to remember that they are indicative of how many of something can be made from a given amount of material. In this case, copper for wire. For example, let’s suppose I can make 14 wires from one pound of wire. If I decide instead to use up that pound of copper and only make 12 wires of the same length, then they would necessarily be a little thicker because I had more copper for each one.
Not exactly, but close. Shotgun gauges are based on how many lead balls the diameter of the barrel can be made from a pound of lead, but wire gauges were originally based on how many times a wire had to be drawn through a die to make that size of wire.
While that's an explanation, it's still a terrible naming scheme. The vast majority of people interacting with the product are going to be downstream from manufacturing and have no reason to care and quite possibly no knowledge of why it's so unintuitive.
@@Belgand not terrible - one needs only educate themselves on the reasoning for the nomenclature. Just like Blue Ray vs DVD, not everything can be immediately intelligible without effort ahead of time.
"Imagine a coffee-maker, a microwave, and a toaster are all on the same circuit." Don't have to. You just described my kitchen, along with a wall-mounted can opener. They're even in the same outlet, thanks to a splitter. Yes I have tripped the breaker by running everything at once, why do you ask?
It's interesting that here in Australia we have similar Amp ratings, but due to 240v you can shove three 1500 watt devices on there and still have an amp or two spare headroom
I made a comment similar to yours then scrolled down and found a couple of other kitchen circuit overload comments then found yours. Kitchen wiring is janky.
Yeah... my house (built in the 40s I think) has 5 sets of wall outlets, all on the same breaker though. If I try to run any two devices at once in my kitchen the breaker goes. the only exception is the stove/oven which is clearly on it's own circuit but the rest of the kitchen, lights included, is all on one circuit and it sucks so bad. If I forget I started the kettle and try to make toast, for example, the kitchen goes completely dark - that's also where the breaker is located so now I'm fixing it in the dark if this happens before or after daylight. Oh and the outlets that are part of the stove don't work anymore for some reason so literally everything else is one-at-a-time. Microwave, toaster, kettle, food-processer, rice cooker, can-opener, coffee-grinder, you name it. They all blow the breaker if used two devices at a time. My coffee maker is in another room though, just so it's on a different circuit, because I always need coffee.
The fuse box in my house is literally directly across from the shower head in the bathroom. The door on the box does not close completely. Also the kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms are on ONE FUSE. Unsurprisingly, the high score for "most times the fuse has been blown in a day" is currently 4.
I lived in an ancient house that had been turned into cheap apartments by the local slum-lords when I was first out of school that was about that bad. Poor people don't deserve fire safety! Pah.
Damn, and I thought my house was bad. The circuits make no sense, but at least the kitchen is only on the same circuit as the living room, so we just have to make sure not to turn on the window ac and microwave at the same time.
@@scotpens Mine is from the 70s and we have fuses (and aluminum wiring). Although the panel is kinda weird, since there is one single breaker above the fuses, to cut the power to the whole house. I don't even know if it's a breaker or just a switch
@@leftysheppey You have to rip out the ceiling, floor & depending on the construction of the walls, those too. You don't want to be living there at the time.
my computer case that i still forgot to put the cover on for 5 months now warming my feet as i play beamng while running an ai model and my gpu goes to 101%
@@BigOlSmellyFlashlight honestly if it's just a glass side panel leave it off for the best air temperatures, lol just don't short it out by touching it with your static discharge from your toes. Maybe find a metal mesh side panel with 2-3mm holes to enclose the computer away from EMI/EMC for anyone nearby with a pacemaker or sensitive electronics doesn't go tripping.
Thank you for pointing out the lack of air flow is why the coiled extension cord gets hot. So many people think the coil causes resistance making it heat up more
I agree about the use of the word "safer", as in my mind, safety is an absence of danger, and I don't see any other way to interpret it. So it baffles me that people would interpret the word "safer" to be meant as "100% safe" when it's clearly meant as a comparison relative to something else. I see nothing wrong with stating something to the effect of "jumping off a 15 foot ledge is safer than jumping off a 200 foot ledge". There is danger in both activities and nothing I've said implies that you should jump from a 15 foot ledge, you certainly should not.
The fact that he explained how he interprets "safer" to the audience proves to me this dude is solid AF as a person. The fact he "needed" to explain is what scares me. Great videos. 👍
Very well put. It's true you say a car with air bags is safer than a car without it doesn't mean you won't get injured the likelihood of getting injured has slightly decreased people tend to take the word for face value.
I just realized nobody ever thanks all the people who fund this channel except the very guy who puts in all the work. Thanks, donors. You have good taste and are funding stuff that is somehow both historical, educational, entertaining and a fourth thing.
Thank you so much for this video. We are redoing our kitchen and there has been some wiring issues. My husband has tried to explain it to me but I just didn't get it. This was broken down and so much easier to understand. :D
There are rental houses in the US that still have cloth insulated wiring. Source: I rented one. It was terrifying knowing that our walls were basically wired to catch on fire.
Theres tons of houses with tube and knob wiring and lead pipes still… source; im a commercial and residential plumber. When I bought my house I had to demo everything. Youd be surprised at how many hazards exist. Including asbestos insulation, Plaster, etc.
I mean there's lead paint still around and you think they care about some cloth or lead pipes hidden in their house behind the walls. I bet they have a fuse box to make it a combo
Your house probably also had aluminum instead of copper wire. Aluminum wiring was actually code until sometime in the 1970s (in the US; I don't know about other countries).
And that’s why I began using the mouthful “less unsafe”, because I felt “safer” was too often taken to mean “has some safety”, and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that it was not safe. Well, that and I like writing obnoxiously. Actually, that’s probably the main reason.
In the way that it's "less unsafe" to climb a ladder on top of scaffolding without a firecracker in your mouth as opposed to with a firecracker in your mouth?
This is the problem with other words as well. When adverts use the phrase "healthier", people think "oh that means it's healthy!", when fact of the matter is that while replacing sugar in soft drinks with artificial sweeteners might make them "healthier", it still doesn't make them *HEALTHY* (Yes I know there's still a massive debate on the effects of artificial sweeteners).
There is a reason why extension cords in Germany are always rated to 16A, the maximum allowed by any circuit breaker with normal outlets connected to it. Also I think you should have mentioned that the circuit breaker doesnt trip immediately when you only overload them slightly
They aren't, for 16A 1.5mm² is widly considered safe here. Getting cords with no fuse and the same plug with only 1.0mm² wiring is easy even 0.75mm² is possible and has the same certificates then the 1.5mm² one. so yeah ... 230V is guilty of the same shit
Ah that's reassuring. I was going to go and check all of ours. German houses do not have a lot of plugs, at least not if they are older than about 1980.
@Steve Dave I just checked every hardware store´s website in Austria. There is not a single extension cord or power strip rated for less than 16A. There are some rated for 2,5A but those have a different connector where you cant plug in high power appliances, only phone chargers for example. Since 2009 all extensions cords with a less than 1,5mm² are banned or are required to include a fuse.
There's nothing wrong with microwaving bacon. Spending half an hour and making a mess cooking bacon every morning isn't feasible. Com the pack of bacon and microwave it when you want it. Tastes almost exactly the same.
I also noticed that. By the way, did you watch with the closed captioning on? If you haven't, go ahead and do it; it's worth it, even if your hearing is perfect.
7:19 One thing to note: while the individual wires used in Romex are THHN wire, electricians dont refer to Romex as THHN. THHN is used to refer to individual wires that come on a spool, while the official name for Romex is NM-B. NM-B stands for Non-Metallic sheathed cable type B. Type B means it has a higher heat rating. THHN and NM-B are recognized as two separate types of conductors/cables in the NEC.
Thanks. I was hoping someone had addressed that. To take it a step further, while the conductors may be functionally the same as thhn, they are not technically the same as they aren't labeled as such. You can't strip the conductors fom NM-B and use it as individual conductors, for example in conduit.
Tbf, you can microwave bacon quite well. I rarely do it, but wrapped in kitchen crepe, you can quickly heat it, then throw it in the pan for a significantly shorter time span because it just isn't bacon otherwise. Saves on cleanup, wastes paper.
Having worked in life safety, anecdotally, about 75% of the fires I worked in the aftermath of were caused by consumer electronics and extension cords (bad charging cables, overloaded or improperly used extensions), and maybe 25% cigarettes. And NOTHING ELSE. 🤷🏻♂️
made in China toasters burned to the ground 250,000 American homes in the 1980's. That's the equivalent destruction of a nuclear bomb. Not one recall of the product. Can't sue the Commie Chinese. But, Bill Clinton declassified nuclear missile guidance systems and sold it to the Chinese Communists, all perfectly legal treason.
A few years ago, a neighbour of mine died in a fire which was started by a candle on her windowsill ... This was in a country where the electrical safety standards are higher than in the US, though.
Whoever drilled that fear into you was wrong. They should have just explained how it works. Luckily our schools in the US are run by mostly dim bulbs with little to no actual life skills.
I remember having to explain to the accommodation staff in my college that it was perfectly safe having an extension lead with a TV, DVD player and PS2 plugged in. The total current was only around 2 Amps with everything switched on. They still didn't get it.
Power strips are fine in most cases, many many of those annoying little things we end up needing so many plugs for draw very little current, though anything on the large end really should go to something better (though many decent power strips have built in overload protection to prevent stuff like this).
You have an absolute fantastic grasp on how electrical works. You didn’t say anything wrong at all. I’m an electrician and I endorse this message. No seriously, you know your stuff.
Hey there! Correction time (and more thoughts!): THHN wire is what’s _inside_ the sheathing of Romex, which is actually classified as NM-B cable/wire. As in, the conducting wires are THHN, the whole thing together is an NM-B cable. Yep. So there’s that.
Also, I want to be clear that of the problems we have, this isn’t a huge one. Generally, when things get hot because of overloading, it’s at the connection point and not in the wire. For instance, a lot of electrical fires start at the plug/socket interface either because the connection is poor, there could be corrosion, etc. And sometimes they can happen when nothing is overloaded! This is one of the circumstances in which arc-fault circuit interrupters can save lives. It may well be the case that very few fires are started because of the problem we’re discussing in this video. Especially since outside of certain high-draw devices, the risk of overloading the actual conducting wire is low in the first place. That’s why I am comfortable using them!
That said, I remain perplexed that this is an issue we’ve let persist. Most electrical fires aren’t the result of a single thing; they’re a cascade of individually not-great circumstances combining to make a bad situation. In order to reduce the risk of fires, we’ve continually been making the not-great things less bad. That way an increasingly large number of bad circumstances have to align for a fire to happen. Simply put, I think allowing unfused 16 gauge extension cords into the market is a potentially bad link in the chain that we could probably do with cutting out.
In fairness, it used to be much worse. 18 gauge (maybe even 20 gauge) extension cords were available many years ago, but we at least had the sense to make 16 the minimum as time went on. However, as I hope I’ve demonstrated here, that can still be problematic. Pulling 20 amps through that cord made it get very hot quite quickly.
ooof there is some misinformation in this video.
Hey, thanks for the correction
Couldn't agree more. Almost nothing in the electrical system in the US makes real sense when compared to the EU or UK standard. Thin wires? Lousy plugs that fall off and expose the bare metal? Good lord there's some much to do.
Thanks for the correction and remember to add that card at 5:10 🙂
As a Brit, I'd love to hear the full "ring main" rant.
You DO realize that with proper protection everywhere, my channel won't be able to operate, right?!
Flashbacks to the UK video
Well that's a small price to pay…
I mean if there's a will there's a way, & you always manage to find a way 😄
And without proper protection, we'd never get the "SHOWER HEAD OF DOOM!"
Something tells me that you’ll still find a way to shock yourself and possibly start a small electrical fire. I believe in you. You can do it!
"I plugged these two resistive heaters into this thin copper filament, and now I have three resistive heaters!"
It's basically a free heater.
Buy two heaters, get a third one for free!
@@megaharben It's not quite free. How much did your house cost? That's the price of your third resistive heater.
@@jonathanpinkerton1298 you got a point, but hey at least everyone in this thread understands what's going on.
@@jonathanpinkerton1298 you missed the joke ... none the less . My aunty almost set the house on fire with a extension runned underneat a carpet ... thank god nobody got hurt and only the rug had some burn marks
My in-laws are deaf and, as such, we always have the CC on. I really appreciate that you manually create the CC. it is a noticeable difference when I watch your vids. I love the "Overloadedly Smooth Jazz" at the end.
One of the benefits of using a script.
Funnily enough, today I watched a video with auto-generated subtitles. The person started driving a tank with a ton of tank noise. The subtitles said [music]. Perhaps to some people who prefer Meshuggah :)
Through closed captioning is the only way to enjoy smooth jazz
the blooper captions are the best part
If your in-laws ever want to experience music for the first time in their lives again, LCD-4 has been known from deaf war veterans to be able to listen to music crystal clear. to them its worth way more than the MSRP.
This is really eye opening, as a guy who doesnt know anything at all about electricianship. I have always used extension cords to try to distribute the power demand across several outlets. Come to find out, not only are the outlets often drawing from the same supply behind the wall, but the extension cords themselves are more dangerous than an overloaded circuit! This was a real eye opener for me.
Im just over here happy to be alive after growing up in a home with extension cords plugged into other cords plugged into other cords, and so on.
Is electricianship a word
@@mikehev222 tbh i dont think so, but as far as i know there isnt an actual word for it other than saying "electrical work" which is weirdly vague.
Weeeelllllll... to be honest, a high-quality extension cord can be better than the wires in your walls. But definitely watch out for shared outlets
I've noticed that every electric vehicle manual in the world says not to use extension cords with them. And I suspect the reason is simply because these cheap extension cords exist and they don't want to attempt to explain to the owner that they need a specific type of extension cord to handle the current. So instead, they just say not to use them at all. Interestingly enough, I know several people that use extension cords with their EVs, I've even been known to do it occasionally. But we all understand how to pick an extension cord with the right size of wire.
That's basically my problem with buying an electric vehicle. There classes of people who cannot safely or efficiently own them. Rental property owners would need to provide ample charging stations for residents. Home owners in neighborhoods without off street parking or more vehicles than space close enough to the building are also screwed.
Rtfm, use equipment properly and there is no problem
Electric Vehicles CHARGE using a 220 volt system ... extension cords ( in the US ) are ONLY made to handle 120 volts. ...
@@Crazt the US electrical grid .. was made to supply 120 volts to every house ... what would happen if EVRY HOUSE had a 220 volt electrical car charging system ... ( like operating a washer & dryer - every minute of every day ) ... would our electrical grid - as it is now - be able to handle THREE TIMES the power ( if each house had 1 electrical car - but how about 2 electrical cars at each house ) ... the amount of power being delivered to EVERY home in the US ... would BURN up our electrical grid as it was NEVER made to handle 220 volt being delivered to from every home ... 24/7 !
@@Darxide23 ... they use the same 220 volt electrical extension cords BOATS ( over 50 feet ) use to charge their systems while tied up at the dock .... smarter thing would have been to make the "extension cords" ... vehicle specific .
I work at a hardware store. One lady came in complaining her fuses kept blowing. So I sold her more, she came back a week later for more. She had told me she was only using a hot plate. Her friend ran into her. Turns out it was a small range type thing, microwave, coffeemaker and more. It was like everything in her kitchen was running off the same outlet. She wanted higher fuses. I said no it's a fire hazard. "But what if I'm home" no lady it's in your walls. You cannot see it.
Why are there too many stupid people? They think they're always right?
Lel, but what if i'm home, well something will still burn before you'll be able to extiguinsh it but even worse, what if you're NOT home
@@MrQuicheProductions
Being "home" could be worse - if awake there's the 'instictive' move to throw water on it, or otherwise fight the fire and, if asleep, being burned up with the house.
At least if one's out when the fire takes hold it's harder for it to kill you.
@@danek_hren because they reproduce at a higher rate
People asking for higher fuses are the very same people who would sue you even for your underwear if you would give them a higher fuse and their house would burn down.
For my final in my high school speech class I demonstrated making pancakes right in the classroom. To do this I brought in a (rather modest) countertop griddle and, to reach the wall outlet... a flimsy brown extension cord. I didn't think twice about it.
...until partway through the demonstration-speech there was a flash of light as the cord literally melted away from the plug in the wall. We had to get a maintenance guy to come safely remove the now-bare-wire plug from the wall outlet. (He also brought a (better) extension cord, I finished my speech, and got a 99%. And the class got sample pancakes. :)
and no fire and no one was hurt.
@@hastypete2 okay?
@@hastypete2 mmm american
Great story!
I would have docked 5 points for not setting up an appropriate electric griddle station.
ALWAYS KNOW YOUR LOAD!
Spot on. As an electrician I see this all the time. Another thing I run into is people using outdoor rated cords indoors. They think because the extension cord is thicker that it can handle more load. However, it’s still just a 16AWG cord it just has heavier insulation on it to prevent it from cracking in the cold. But used inside it’s like running an extension cord under the carpet, the heavier insulation causes it to heat up more. Heat is what damages the insulation. It caused stress fractures, which causes arcing, which causes heating, which causes fires! So, over heating your cable is what is bad and like you said, that’s why they have over load protection on building wiring. You size the wire to the load and the breaker to the wire. AFCI breakers are used in new houses now to protect the extension cords that are plugged into the walls.
And when it's colder inside then outside your logic is inherently flawed considering room temperature for most months of the year in a lot of states is cooler then outside Temps
Question for the electrician: Are extension cords that can handle 15A or 20A not made? If they exist, is there any reason why they shouldn’t be legislated as the only approved options (similar to anything else that has to pass regs for import & sale)?
@@johnnyc.31 They are made and they do have to have some sort of approval on them like UL or ULC/CSA. But that doesn’t mean that cords or power bars that aren’t approved can’t be sold, your just not supposed to buy them. So make sure if you buy an extension cord or power bar it has the proper approval for your area. If not and it’s starts a fire, your insurance will not cover you. All cords will come with a sticker near the plug end with the information on it. Also, extension cords are approved for temporary use only. Also any appliances you buy that will need to run 15-20 amps will say on it’s power cord “ don’t use with extension cords or power bars “. That’s for their liability. So really power bars are designed for things like your home entertainment system that all together only draws about 5 amps. Extension cords are really for things like running a saw to cut a board that’s short intervals and the cord has time to cool between cuts and gets unplugged and rolled up at the end of the day.
Wtf, mind is blown. I figured outdoor ones were safer all around.
Damn.. I 100% thought this. Thanks for letting us know!
I'm impressed on how you got your leg up on the table like that
That was the absolute highlight of the whole video.
I wonder how many tries it took him :D
Big guys can be limber. Lookup Sammo Hung
“Hawt!”
I knew that was a moment I would see later in a blooper reel
You never met my friend's neighbor. He took the fuses out of Christmas lights and replaced them with a nails or a bit of wire. The reason he did this was "the stupid fuses keep blowing when I plug all the strands in on this run". Yes this man systematically defeated every single fuse in his Christmas lights because he was plugging too many in to each other and was irritated that they kept blowing fuses.
that's why they should have breakers instead of fuses
Lol lots of people do that. Or just replace the fused plugs with non-fused ones
@@davidpar2 that's also the reason why the british plug is overrated
so he mighta had 20 plugs going in at once, eh? Like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
@@gamecubeplayer seems you dont understand anything about electricity 😂
Seriously, I love the line "the only conclusion I feel comfortable making here, is that I don't have enough information to come to a meaningful conclusion." We live in a world, and in particularly on an internet, that is so often devoid of nuance. Combined with a toxic mentality that generally prohibits admitting that you don't know something, and basic levels of communication and debate break down. You're one of the last few bastions of rational discourse and I applaud that. Thank you, Alec.
seriously. I keep waiting for this channel to say something that pisses me off purely because the guy is smart, and he just doesn't ever go there.
well, rarely.
I would really like to see a return to civilized argument.
We live in a society hehe
Yep, Alec is a gem.
Yes. I was extremely happy to hear him say that
Are you saying I shouldn’t plug my space heater into the 50’ 16ga extension cord, of which the excess wire I keep coiled up under my mattress to provide additional warmth??
Life pro tip: you absolutely can! You will even grt a lot of bonus heat very quickly. I did this and my home was warmed to a crisp! My while house was like one big fireplace!
@@olican101 Staying warm for rest of your life!
I cackled at this lmao
Unless there are more plugs per outlet, I don’t think having more outlet locations will reduce how often people use power strips. Even the simplest TV or computer setup needs more than just two outlets, and if the choice is between running an extension to the next outlet another 6ft away or to put a strip on the closest one, you still run into the gauging issue either way.
It alleviates the problem, it doesn't solve it. Most new homes will have 2 gang outlets where TVs will obviously be placed.
I use the 2 to 6 block, they are cheap, can take a lot of power and they look less messy than a power strip laying under the desk
If you're willing to spend more money on a good power strip it can be safer than plugging your devices directly into the wall. As mentioned in the video, there is no over current protection outside the walls of the house. If you plug a good power strip in, there is now a breaker outside the walls.
The problem is using a power strip as a permanent way to extend power, i.e. home entertainment, computer, etc, is a violation of NEC electrical code. Thing is there's a disconnect over what people can buy and what they can legally use it for which probably should be remedied
Both of those setups should use a high-end surge protectors or UPSs. So 14 or 12 Guage wiring and not Walmart quality internals.
The fact that you cover, in depth, the technology that we all take for granted, and not the new-fangled fancy stuff that everybody can't afford, makes you my favourite tech channel. Thank you
I have so little interest in The Latest In Smart Technology and would much rather hear about the mechanisms of how the things around us operate and the complexity of making appliances function as intended
@@felixc543 case in point: I have the exact same white extension cord at 5:42 with a few devices plugged into it 10 feet away right now. I always thought that was a bad idea, but never knew why. Now I do.
Talent: The ability to get people to happily spend 25 minutes learning about extension cords
He gets my attention every time. It's pure sorcery.
I didn't make it to 3 minutes. Get. To. The. Point.
Im an expert on many obsolete technologies because of this channel
@@jos9569 You saw how long the video was before you even clicked on it, so what made you think you'd be able to glean all the information you wanted in only 3 minutes? Also have you never seen one of this guy's videos? They're pretty consistently longform, which clearly isn't aimed at twitchy, caffeine riddled ADHD sufferers such as yourself.
@@jos9569 idk how you could tear yourself away at 3 min. By then I'm already hooked. You do realize the point of any explanation usually comes at the end. Did you want his conclusion at the beginning?
As somebody who’s been an engineering hobbyist for quite some time now, I can confidently say this guy is the absolute best at dumbing things like this down enough for the average person to understand.
Super important to have the average person understand too. As someone who used to work residential electrical daily, I’ve seen some crazy things with extension cords.
He's a blessing
For the most part, he doesn't really understand it, and extremely condescending, this particular video being particularly bad. You don't see it because there are very good production values.
@@brettbuck7362I’m intrigued by your comment. I watch his videos from time to time, what is it in particular that you would say he doesn’t understand?
@@nyccollin There are always envious people who like to detract other people's work. They can't be bothered to show how it's done, if they think they can do better. It's much more comfortable to just nag, believing they are "so much smarter".
Space Heater: "Do not use with extension cord!"
Also Space Heater: "Here's an incredibly useless 3 foot cord. Enjoy!"
Another reason why 🇬🇧 wins
It could be anti-trip? So that you don't stumble over it and knock it over perhaps. We got an Instant Pot and that was the reasoning it gave in the manual for a short cord.
@@MatthewJBD go team GB, always being nocked, for it very large plugs :-)
@@brightmong7290 most space heaters have a sensor if it’s knocked over it’ll turn off automatically
Yea, when he was saying 6 foot power cords for devices are pretty standard, I was like... most of my devices seem to cheap out and have a 1 meter (~3 feet) power cord, AT BEST these days, lol. All my game consoles (Xbox One, PS4, PS5)? 3 foot power cables. My monitor? 3 foot power cable. My PC's power supply? 3 foot power cable. My HDMI splitter? 2 foot power cable. I really WISH more stuff actually came with a 6 foot power cable at least, lol.
One guy in my engineering group works full time making a model of the electrical system in our plant, ensuring that overcurrent protection is, in fact, appropriate at every level of the electrical system. Another person did some work on extension cords and ended up banning most extension cords, causing grief and hard feelings throughout the plant: only 14 AWG cords with single outlets allowed!
That was dreadful tale from times of begining of mass installation of PCs in ex-soviet organisations. Looks like it is really tempting to shove space heater and kettle to that convinient power strip that come with new PC, and takes some time (especially for older users) to understand that it gets to funny results.
See, this is why I tend to buy 12awg 50 foot cords.,
The weird thing is briefly looking on Amazon, the 14 gauge isnt all that more expensive then 16...
At first I read "plant" as "planet" and was really impressed that a single guy could handle that job!
@@SeanBZA On top of that, it's hard to even find a decent pair of jumper cables at local stores now. They seem to only sell the cheap 16, 18, or 20 AWG ones. Anything less and they don't sell it or it's out of stock!
I have to say, the approach you took to explain this issue ("the breakers only protect the wires in the walls") is SUCH A GREAT way to frame the problem. How an explanation is framed is one of the most important parts of good explanations, and you do that really well in general. But I think it really shines here. Kudos!
Yeah I was surprised to learn how many people thought the fuses/breakers were for their safety than to stop the wires melting, when I studied electrical engineering. It was eye opening seeing so many first years that thought it would trip if they were earthing the phase
i now realize i have a small fridge, two monitors, my pc and my neon lights on one outlet
I'm not sure how it is in America, but in Europe, literally all "computer" extension cords have a breaker built into them
@@Zigfried207same in Australia
@@Zigfried207 And I believe all cables with an F type plug must be wired for 16 amps.
I'm literally a residential electrician and I still do shit like this
@@Zigfried207 maybe all in the eu, but not all in Europe because i live in Europe too lol
If we required safety fuses on extension cords, it wouldn't be confusing, it would be profusing.
Hi.
I ask around to see if someone would
be interested in a lil Project of mine.
Some people try to be the 180 Degree Opposite
of Cancel-Culture and try to help UA-cam
become less... well, lets say 'Messy' to use nice words only...
...
Interested to hear a bit more?
@Loturzel Restaurant go away
But knowing Americans, many would protest against it and claim that the government is planting spy bugs
@@loturzelrestaurant What?
@@ravenouself4181 I dont know how to say it more simple than: I have a Good-Cause-Project that costs no money and little Time; wanna hear more about how to help UA-cam become less hate-filled and sex-sells-filled?
It is, obviously, not a MIRACLE WONDER Solution,
but who needs that? It worked enough in the Testing (by me) so that i know ask around if someone wants to also do it.
After my Grandfather died we cleaned out his workshead. That’s when we found out he “wired” it with extension cords. Not too bad, just a workshead... Until the house he had with my Grandmother needed an updated breaker box. That’s when the electrician found my Grandfather also wired parts of the house with extension cords. Behind the walls.
This made laugh so damn hard and loud. Hilarious. Sounds like something I would think about doing.
Do you mean a workshed? I've never ever seen shed, spelled shead. Just wonder if it's how you spell it elsewhere or just a typo.
I use two extension cords to meet my ideal outlet position 😅😅😅
To be fair, there's nothing wrong with using extension cords for wall wiring. So long as it's the correct wire gauge and meets the thermal requirements (which might have to be derated because the wires are physically closer together) then it's fine. It will probably work out more expensive than bulk wire meant for in-wall installation though. Also I'm assuming you're just talking about the wire, with the plug and socket chopped off the extension cord. If you mean the plugs and sockets on the extension cords were used to connect them then that's much less safe, due to corrosion and the plugs potentially working their way loose over time from vibration/movement nearby.
Lmao
Throwing your leg up on the table with more extension cords was a pretty solid bit.
anyone that microwaves bacon deserves to have their breaker blow
Boss move for sure
Why doesn't all US outlets have a switch attached to them?
@@bilinasmini3480 bloody hell, get out you bot!
Yaaar matey!
As an Australian, seeing that extension cord with three sockets on it is just WILD. That's fkn nuts.
Does Australia not have those? I have one here in the UK with 12 on it...
@@olican101 We have power boards/strips with that many outlets, but not in the form of an extension cord with a dongle like end.
uk extension chords are way chonkier in size
just because the plugs are bigger
ShittyLifeProTips: Enable circuit breaker protection on underrated extension cord by tying a knot on the wires! Once the insulation soften, the conductor may contact each other and make a dead-short, tripping the breaker. The molten PVC smell, along with the spark will give you both smell and audiovisual alert as well. What else can you ask for?
lmao 😂😂
I mean, that... that's not a half bad idea(?) Unless you have an old FPE panel, those fuckers will never trip
That's a horrible idea. Circuit breakers aren't perfect. You're still asking for a house fire. Might as well sleep with oily rags in a room with lit candles.
surprisingly thats how the majority of circuits i encounter as an electrician go bad, when the wiring was installed someone got carried away with the hammer while stapling the wire and while it worked fine for lighting and small appliances. apply a larger load and boom instant short circuit with no way to fix it except run a whole new circuit. you also come across it a lot in remodels where wires are moved around and get pinched or are bent back and forth many times before the job is done.
@@OnlyNotes You're correct --- that _is_ not a half bad idea! With the emphasis on the not!
19:48 "I don't have enough information to come to a meaningful conclusion." - Thank you so much. This sentence should be the go-to-answer of so many people, yet they decide to blurt out their ignorance. You don't. Again : thank you.
One of the many reasons I respect this man so greatly
I’v never understood… Why people make shit up or try to explain ideas they don’t even understand.
Saying the words… I DONT KNOW!!! Is one of the best feelings! Because it absolving yourself, and then you might just learn something in the process!
'I don't know' / 'I don't have enough information to come to a meaningful conclusion' should be taught in schools. It's an honest sign of intelligent thought. Superb channel!
I hate that this is so rare it deserves praise
The mark of true intelligence is knowing when you don't know. I tell people that ignorance is not an insult, it's a reading list.
Ironically when you said you are just a person on the internet with google, it made you one of the most credible people here.
That flimsy brown extension cord brought back bad memories of childhood. Think the scene in “A Christmas Story” where the dad plugs in the light set, it sparks and catches fire. Yup, fill every plug with instant high draw electronics and wonder why it sparks and pops.
Now I know why a lot of cables say uncoil before use. So the wire can dissipate heat.
That, and weird electromagnetic issues too. A coil of wire, even without a core, is basically a bad choke and will act as such.
I always thought it was because a coil of wire is essentially an electromagnet and current passed through it will cause a magnetic field, which can be problematic depending on what else is close to the wire (remember that a moving magnetic field can induce current in another electromagnet nearby - AC voltage would cause exactly that)
It might be both, but for high voltage AC specifically it might be more of a heat issue.
The same rule also applies to data carrying cables because of the interference the magnetic field can cause.
@@Jdbye it’s not even things near the coil that’s the problem - a collapsing magnetic field resists changes to current, and AC current means the field is constantly building up and collapsing. You effectively de-rate the wire to be able to handle less current by keeping it in a coil, because the building/collapsing magnetic fields generate more resistance than if it was uncoiled. Some wound extensions (in the UK, at least) actually have two amp ratings, a lower one for if it is coiled and a higher one if it is uncoiled for this reason.
@John Jenkins that’s partly true, but it’s definitely primarily because it de-rates the cable to being able to handle a lower amperage due to it acting like a choke.
@@jamestrotter7852 An extension cable has equal currents flowing in both directions, so wouldnt any inductance effects cancel out?
After watching this video, I went and inspected my extension cable running my window mount AC unit in my bedroom. I had never considered the extension cord gauge size on the cord I was using for my AC (it was a super cheap one). Sure enough, it was nice and warm. Ended up buying a nice thick (I cant remember the gauge, maybe 14?) extension cord specifically to run my AC unit. Thanks for possibly saving my house from burning down!
Yeh. Its probably not that big of a risk; I suspect if american homes burned down all the time due to this, it wouldve changed. And while I live in europe, with more power in the outlet, super thick power cables are also the standard.
Still made me switch out the quite old extension cord I use for my PC/desk with one with fuse and full outlet specification. Doesnt hurt to be safe.
@@termitreter6545 actually the higher voltage allows for thinner wires to carry the same power. Because Watts are Volts*Amps, you only need half the current for the same amount of power.
@@wta1518 Huh, I havent even considered that voltage and current might have different effects on reistance. So thats probably also why (vaguely speaking) amperage is more dangerous to humans than voltage, isnt it?
Thanks, learned something new today. Imma go googling electricity stuff now :D
@@termitreter6545 Well, no. Voltage difference allows current to flow. For safety from electrocution, both are important. For the subject of the video, which is mainly heating, there are other effects that are important. First there is direct heating of the wire from the current flowing through it. Second, the conductance of the wire changes with temperature, conductance goes down with increasing temperature in copper. This means that the more the temperature goes up, the worse with wire conducts and the more the wire looks like a resistor. As the wire conductance goes down (and the resistance goes up) then more of the total circuit power is dissipated in the wire rather than in the applied device ( such as a toaster). So more toasting happens outside the toaster and more in the supplied wiring. Eventually the plastic insulation melts and the conductors can short directly to each other.
A cash donation would go a lot further than a thank you. Message me for cash app details.
First the pre-wash in the dish washer and now extension chords. This channel is giving me more things to be a dad about.
No one said anything about music.
The pre-wash in the dishwasher has actually made such a huge difference. I just used cheap generic cleaner for the pre-wash and then better pods for the maineash. Still kicks ass.
@@AlphaGeekgirl -
@@Zarrxdouble the detergent
@@richardcranium3579twice the clean
10:12 Who also had this drawing in mind there, with the dog sitting at a table, thinking "It's fine", while the whole room is on fire?
.
On the 'safer/less dangerous' linguistic quirk. I've run into a similar problem with 'feeling better'. Because if you're sick or injured, 'feeling better' can mean 'back to normal' OR 'still bad, but not as bad'.
yeah that's when I feel I have to throw in "feeling a bit better," but that's more over text. spoken, the tone tells exactly whether you mean feeling good again or just less bad
any time there is a need to convey a scale, and a comparator word (specifically when the other end of the comparison is not stated, ie "better than what, and by how much?") is used to denote a place along that scale, this issue will arise. When this exists, there is a generally agreed upon scale, but there is no objective scale, so different people can assume different scales.
this is basically a more all-encompassing way to restate what Michael Kortsen said, but the point in doing so is to emphasize the need to point out that a scale is assumed, and that by clarifying what that scale is, there is no linguistic confusion. the issue is that people hate unnecessarily long sentences or phrases, hence the backlash on euphemisms, so really we should just replace "I am better" with something like "I am unsick" since there is no other simple word to describe overcoming an illness of your own accord
@@vidiot5533 unsick is an amazing word, but no longer sick and now in good health also work. Sickn't is my personal favorite with friends though. There's also recovered, if you need a serious yet not wordy way of conveying "though I was sick I am no longer in that state"
that’s more of a problem with relative language
Which has it’s uses, but i feel like companies use relative words to cover up certain flaws
@@tacticallemon7518 Case in point: "it's uses" is less correct than "its uses"
Hi Alec. During my career I developed and taught electrical training classes covering the NEC (NFPA70), Electrical Safety (NFPA70E) and Power Engineering and I have to tell you this was extremely well done. You covered many fundamentals of wiring and thoroughly explained a few of the hazards. Excellent content and context. I don't know how you research your material but you extracted critical details that aren't obvious and not well understood by the general populous. Great job, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
He does this so casually, but the guy must research topics until he’s basically a professional 😂
U R R-TARDED BRO THIS GUY IS A HACKKK
Electrical extension devices usually sell for under $10, so no one's even going to notice the additional cost of a fuse.The government shouldn't even have to be involved.
@@DUCKSAREEVILLLLLLLL and yet there are enough companies willing to let people die over $10 that we do need government intervention
exactly my thoughts! Very cohesive. I’m still an apprentice so this was fun to listen to decoding something i didn’t even realize fully! Love this trade for that reason. i’m always learning. now i’m looking at everything i’m using around my house now 🤣
I’m a general contractor, I’ll be having my non electrical employee’s watching this..... this is a very well executed general explanation of US electrical circuits . Great channel!!
👍👍👍👍
I agree.
Yup, and we install the recepticals upside down...cause it make a face? The ground pin is supposed to be up, so if something conductive falls into an plug not fully inserted, it doesn't short out. I don't know, like the metal fish your busy us holding onto and slides down the wall, hitting the extension cord and zap.
@@blaircox1589 NO! 🤬
@@blaircox1589 The fact that it was done that way means that most wall warts and other things are designed with the expectation of the ground down. Having it up, as is required in many commercial settings, can be a pain for residential devices.
@@MadScientist267 triggered, LOL Both ways have pros and cons, neither is right or wrong, but there is a higher probability of something conductive touching exposed prongs than an index finger on the bottom. Other than that, it's purely cosmetic and following what everyone else does as 'normal'.
i dont know how it is in other countries, but over here where i live (Germany), every extension cord has their maximum wattage imprinted somewhere in the plastic case. every one i own/used so far, is rated for 16A at 230V, that is our standart circuit braker size for houses
Same in Sweden. But the max wattage isn't really that important, since all the cords must handle 16A, so one will comply knowingly or not. In Sweden, also all new electrical installations use not only overload circuit breakers, but also "ground failiure" breakers. (I think though you can have some wiring bypassing that for very certain purposes.)
I'm not sure - I live in an old house - but I think it is very unusual that electrical outlets will support more than 10A before the fuse breaks? So extension cords are then also always overdimensioned.
I think a lot of this is actually EU regulation these days. At least the extension cords and such, have to comply to EU standards, and have a "CE" compliance hallmark to show that.
@@andersgrassman6583 yeah, lots if eu rules nowadays. We have ground failure breakers as well. A few years ago, they were only required in bathrooms, but nowadays, they are usually installed everywhere
And every Extension cord has to have Minimum 1,5 mm² Kabelquerschnitt, ITS frankly bonkers that the us is at least 50 jears behind (No gfci in every circuid for example)
Thier marked in usa too but 16 gauge(most common gauge cord) Is smaller than what the standard is in the house.
I'm 70 seconds into the video and already, I can't wait any longer to share this story. My mother sleeps with a heating pad underneath her. One time she was taking a nap when she heard a pop and fizzle. The outlet by her bed had blown and left behind some soot. She had her heating pad plugged into a power strip plugged into one of those dinky extension cables, which was plugged into another dinky extension cable at the other end of the bed, which was plugged into the outlet that had just blown, the one that was right next to her readily available to receive the heating pad directly, the one that she couldn't access because she stuck her highly flammable nightstand in front of it. Narrowly avoided a house fire that could've been prevented entirely if she didn't needlessly daisy chain extension cables.
EDIT: Thanks for mentioning the fearmongering. Based on the rest of the video discussing the wire itself overheating I'm not sure if pop-fizzle is relevant here. I still stand by my mother being a complete idiot.
Yeah. Alec could have mentioned how the brass connectors in power strips do NOT conduct electricity as well as the copper making up the cable. So daisy chaining power strips with the second strip plugged into the 6th outlet on the first can cause significantly more heat than having the second strip plugged into the 1st outlet. The difference is the entire load of the second strip flowing through 12 inches of brass instead of 2.
That's why you should never chain two extension cords together. It's even written in the warning leaflet that comes with the cords.
Wow! Yes, make her stop that!
Also, maybe buy her high quality longer cords just to force the change.
STARTING WITH YOU DO NOT SLEEP ON TOP OF THE HEATING PAD
damn heating pads are so hard to make safe, the very idea is running contrary to what you normally want in a thing that's plugged in..
As an HVAC journeyman 20 years deep. This is probably the best video I have seen on basic household amp ratings and why they matter. Well done
As a new electrical apprentice, this was rather eye opening to what's going on in my house electrically lol
This person has also done a very good explanation on contactors and even went on a tangent about HVAC, which as someone who is in school about HVAC, and also who likes electrical-related things, appreciate his videos :)
The tech who installed the heat pump at my place needs to under more about brakers... they double taped the feed lugs from the pole up stream of the master braker. If the compressor goes locked rotor then the braker at the power plants the first line of defense. Log cabin was built in 1904 and was last updated in the early 70's, time to bring it into the modern eara.
@@daviddroescher
Your comment is so technical, obscure and personal, it's meaningless to most readers.
What's your point and what do you want?
Google the equation for the current potential at a fault. Without protection of a fuse or breaker, it is basically infinite.
This is funny because my school dance was actually evacuated due to whoever set things up, deciding to use one single outlet to run all the stage lights, speakers, projectors, and led panels. Sure enough, there was a fire in the school gym and the dance was canceled.
I just read that going, oh no, no he did not... no way ...
If only there was such a place where one could learn these sort of stuff...
was the song 'safety dance' playing or not playing at the time?
power strip-ception
What size breaker?
This was a very important point- I run a christmas lights drive thru park, and we use a DIY extension cordage that is also 20g and you can cut to length and attach male/female plugs as needed. I have incidentally overloaded a few of these and they literally burn up at the connections. By dumb luck, Ive not started a fire, and now I know better. But my parents did start a house fire with a bad powerstrip running ozone machines and a fan. Be careful out there folks!
I think the ozone machines are the greater danger. Ozone is a dangerous substance and should be avoided! They don't call it carcinogenic, but they do list it as mutagenic. My college professor gave us hell because he could smell ozone coming from our experiment.
This video should be required viewing for all homeowners. I’m a Master Electrician, but I learned and was reminded of several very important t facts. Thank you!
these kinds of things should be basic education for everyone, just like First Aid...
Thanks to LEDs, apart from kitchen appliances, the only things that can cause overload these days are vacuums, space heaters, and hair dryers. Those are always kept below 1200 watts, usually running 1100 or less, making them safe (alone) in all but the cheapest extension cords. Hair dryers and vacuums almost always have sufficiently-long cords, so it's really just space heaters, which are already a fire hazard themselves, and only if someone plugs in other things to the same cord. Or uses a really old one, I guess.
I guess desktop PCs can get pretty power-hungry, but no one would plug a 1000-watt PC into an extension cord. That's a high-end gaming rig, it's going into a surge protector if not an UPS.
@@Voron_Aggrav Also some law like basic rights and when to talk to the police (never).
@@Bacteriophagebs Lots of people plugging their highend 1000Watts PCs to extension cords
@@Ibrag91 A PC that actually draws 1000W is very rare. Having a 1000W PSU doesn't mean it ever draws that much, a modern high draw PC can draw around 700W when under extreme load.
EXCELLENT video. I'd like to add:
- 6 ft accessories require outlets every 12 feet, not every 6, since you get 6 to the left, and 6 to the right of the accessory
- fire marshals HATE chained extension cords
- overloading extension cords also softens and melts insulation in the cord, and can lead to an arc and sparking, which ignites stuff (I've had a hair dryer cord IGNITE while I was drying my hair due to the cord softening at the dryer, so like RIGHT by my hand)
- fuses in 120vac plugs used to be common (I still have a few here, most are made of *bakelite* and use the bigger glass fuses)
- using an extension cord as a splitter isn't really all that economical - a super cheap 5 outlet power strip costs about the same as a standard 3 outlet extension cord
and I LOVED your 100mph analogy for "safer"
Who tf wouldn't get the difference between "safe" and "safer"? Still bothers me.
@OP When I moved into my house, I found a nifty splitter in the garage. It's a nice plastic box with six outlets that will accommodate grounded plugs. It is designed to be mounted (by screws) to a regular duplex outlet. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to actually fit on any of the outlets in my house.
My house was built in 1939. While it has a circuit breaker box rather than glass screw-in fuses and has 24 circuit breakers for a six room house, I do limit the number of things I operate in the kitchen at one time.
On the first point, you also have to account for the vertical distance and distance from the wall. By the time you get there, having six feet between sockets is probably about what is reasonable to pretty much always reach with a six foot cord while retaining reasonable slack (thinking a table lamp, about two feet up and one foot in).
This video stopped a near fatal mistake! It literally saved my neighbors and my family from a potential fire do to my negligence🥺 You see I live in an apartment building, earlier in the day I brought home our Betta fish from work to care for him, I was tired while setting him up the socket I was planning to plug his filter and heater into already had a lamp plugged into the top and My cats water fountain plugged directly into the bottom part of the socket, I grabbed a cheap extension cord we had lying around
I made an ignorant mistake by unplugging the cats water fountain from the wall socket then plugged it into the SAME cheap extension cord as the fish's equipment 🤦🏻♀️ later I was in bed when I came across this video after I watched it I got up one last time to check on the fish I thought 🤔 Maybe I should check the warning tags on the fountain and fish equipment, The water fountain plug was already VERY HOT and was starting to smell like burning plastic I immediately unplugged everything. If it wasn't for this video It wouldn't have crossed my mind to check the warning tags on the plugs😳 It makes me feel physically sick what could have happened to not only to my family but other families that live in our apartment building. 😳
Damn, I'm glad you're safe.
I'm so glad you fixed the problem!
HOLY CRAP, tell EVERYONE you can so they don’t fall into the same trap, PLEASE! Now I’m very worried someone else in your apartment may fall in the same trap and inadvertently (and criminally) burn the whole place down! Please, for the love of God, stay safe, especially your cats!! 😬😕
ive just walked around to check my cords, yeah its not good i need to sort something out i feel them getting how when i do stuff:/
@@4450krank there will always be some level of heat in power cords being used. just check the amps they allow for and determine what you have plugged in. If its a 12 amp cord and youve got a lamp or light use item plugged in your fine. Basically you can use a 12 amp cord on a 15 amp outlet....you just need to make sure whatever your plugging in doesnt pull more than the 12 amps though. Which most things wont come close. heaters, blow dryers, vacuums and other high power appliances are really the only risk on those things.
I responded to a fire that was caused by a space heater in a porch with an extension cord run under a carpet. Probably one of the ones you were showing. It was an old couple preparing to go away for the winter.
They had a checklist of things To Do to the house before they left it alone. unfortunately the last thing on the list was to turn off the electrical panel. By the time they realized the fire started, the front door was like tripled dead bolted. the only remaining exit was through the back porch where the fire started.
It was not a great situation but everyone's survived.
I am actually impressed they advertise the gauge that largely.
They're not stupid. They don't want to get sued if something happens and this way they can say it was clearly marked.
or the average ignorant consumer would be like "16 is a _bigger_ numberthan 14, it must be *_better!_*" 🤣
(of course if there were even any 14's on the shelf to compare too)
@@falxonPSN in the UK I've only seen the max amp displayed, the wire gauge could be anything out side of the (safety standard mark of some sort. :-)
@@youdontknowme5969 There was a 12 on the shelf when he was filming the store.
@@dh2032 this is how it should be. That's what matters to the average consumer. They also need to know examples of loads to size accordingly
Good job highlighting this problem. There was a fatal fire in my apartment building many years ago caused by a space heater plugged into a thin extension cord. An elderly tenant and her dog died. RIP Helen.
And Sparky. :-(
Who was the woman who owned Helen? Guess you liked that dog, eh?
Bedankt. You know how to turn absolutely boring subjects into interesting videos. And suddenly the subject is not boring anymore! You're great, keep up the good work.
Thank you!
I work for an electric utility, we substitute "Safer" with "Improved Margin of Safety" so that the user's bias is reduced with the word "Safer".
Choice of language and wording is important
What about "less deadly"?
THATS FUNNY!! I am a utility infrastructure inspector for a City, we don't right up an issues as a hazard, we call it a potential risk.... Keeps the attorneys and OSHA of our backs when something does go wrong
It scares me people that people thought safer meant no danger at all. Like do we speak the same language anymore.
It's nice of you to cater to people's stupidity, but they will get just more stupid, and then you need to find yet another wording.
"It is confusing, but are you really surprised" is my favorite
"Kitchens are usually designed more smartly to avoid this." Let me introduce you to my house, where when I moved in if you used the microwave and toaster at the same time, a breaker would trip that covered the kitchen, 3 bedrooms, a hallway, and one bathroom. (yes, I have fixed the wiring after discovering this)
My folks had two ovens connected on the same circut, after a rewiring of the entire place.
My office kitchen has one single circuit breaker for every plug in there (6) outside the fridge. You try to microwave or toaster oven or even plug in something random like a projector while the coffee maker is on (which is always, let's be honest here, it's an office) and the breaker trips. It is the stupidest design ever for a room.
this reminded me, at one point one of the light switches in my bedroom would trip a breaker and the entire house's power would go out. my parents didn't know about it at first, so whenever they'd make me mad id flip the switch
@@nataliegath395 ive literally daisy chained 12 outlets together in offices
@@nhilz Wow! That's crap, yet also amazing!
Yes, I'm commenting on a 2yo video... just found the channel and have been binging it. Love the way you make the most mundane and sometimes irrelevant to my life topics, if not interesting, pleasant to listen about :P
While the "distance to closest outlet" issue is also being tackled across the pond (central Europe citizen here), the issue of the number of outlets per room, and often times their location, is frankly braindead.
In today's world, in a modern home, nearly every room has about half a dozen electrical devices, plus at least half a dozen mobile ones across the home (the vacuum, a phone charger, a fan) and yet it's very common for most rooms to have 1 or maybe 2 double outlets and call it quits. And it's not like all household devices ride the line right up to overpowering the circuit of a single outlet, especially since as you mentioned the outlets tend to be chained within the wall anyway. A lot of apartments buildings are built with small rooms, hence the distances are small, but so is the number of total outlets available. And when you consider that many fairly basic things in any given room require electricity, a power strip becomes pretty much a necessity. I can't imagine trying to plug in a multi-screen PC office without either extension cables or a power strip. If we're talking a router and maybe even the speakers with a dedicated power supply, that's easily 4-6 plugs, and in a small-ish room, I might only have 2 available.
I have the same issue with just having a tv, some basic home cinema, a blue ray and a PS4... that's 4 plugs, and unless I set it all up in the middle of the wall, I'll need a cord to reach one or the other of the double outlets.
I am from Poland and there is similar problem in Poland with the number of outlets. But to be honest even if I had 15 outlets in my small room I would be a little bit wary of using them directly. I am kinda used to plug all my expensive electronics only via plug strips with EMI and RFI filters and overvoltage protection, to protect my electronics. Maybe in modern installation there is no need for them, but having a single button to cut off few appliances connected is still neat and it gives some placebo effect (but I am still one of those who if leaving house for more than one day will unplug all the non-essential electronics).
The one problem I have noticed, sometimes people buy just cheapest extension cords with a switch believing it has some kind of protection on board, but it fact it would be better to connect directly to the socket in the wall.
One of my high school teachers had a power strip plugged into another power strip, which was plugged into a laptop cart along with a printer, and that cart was plugged into a 3 outlet splitter along with a projector, which was then converted from 3 prongs to 2, which was then plugged into a 25-foot 2-prong extension cord, which was then coiled up and plugged into an outlet 2 feet away.
How many burn marks?
@@nikkiofthevalley Luckily none, and I ended up re-wiring it for her. Our school had occasional fire marshal inspections, though, and I'm guessing if he had seen that she would've gotten an earful.
So she had a laptop, printer, and projector. About 200 watts total. That’s nowhere near the carrying capacity of the extension cords, so where’s the danger? They weren’t overheating.
My only question is why she had 3 extension cords in a row (laptop cart + power strip + power strip). Just for simplicity, it would have been better have 1 long one.
@@electrictroy2010 A laptop CART. Which means 40 laptops all charging at once.
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams
why dont they have one nuculear generator off shore that powers a big fan that spins windmillsl all clean aeroelectrical power
Watch AEVs video on that cable car crash , someone made the same comment on that
@@djscottdog1 Cool, I'll check that video out. Thanks.
@@djscottdog1 Is it AEV or AvE?
42. . . Oops, wrong question.
What I missed in the video, was the fact insulation detoriates with temperature AND TIME. What that means is that you can 'overload' a wire and think that everything is fine. It may get a little warm, but it seems to work. However, the longer you do that, the worse the insulation is. After three years (time) your margin of safety is gone ... and if you are lucky you will smell the insulation smoldering before the fire starts. EXPERIENCE.
Yes, electrical fires have a distinct smell.
Years ago I was sitting at a piano bench with a floor lamp about three feet from me. The cord had deteriorated and it started arcing at the lamp end. The arc followed the cord and in less than a second flames where well above the bottom of the curtains by the outlet. (Seemed like two or three feet high to me.) I jerked the curtains away, but the arcing did not stop till it reached the outlet. At which point it self extinguished. The coiled pattern of the cord was clearly visible on the hardwood floors. There was no time to "smell" anything. I think an ARC FAULT breaker might have triggered, but such things did not exist, at least at the residential level then. In my opinion, if I had not removed the curtains, or if the floor had been carpet, a major fire would have occurred in less than 3 seconds. Insulation failure is a biggie to me. But then, that is not what this video was about, and one video can't cover everything.
I know electrical burning smell mostly from motors... what does overheated insulation smell like?
@@grn1 for a few dollars you can buy a new outlet at home depot. Plenty of instructional videos online that show how to change it. You'll want to cut off any burnt wire and don't forget to turn off the breaker first. A voltage meter and electrical pliers are good to have. I'm not an electrician, I taught myself and have done lots of small jobs like that. Tell you're landlord to fix it or you'll do it if they take $100 off rent. An electrician would probably charge $100 just to show up.
Just had a 30 amp 240v circuit catch the insulation in my wall on fire. Turns out, there's a junction box behind the wall used as a splice point. The breaker run is aluminum.... and that was twist tied to copper, then down to the outlet. The wire splice caught fire inside the junction box, then spread to the insulation and up the wall. Was awake and caught the smell before it became real bad. Fire department was less than 5 minutes away. Aaaaaaaaand.... breaker (30A) DID NOT trip.
Videos like these make me aware of things I will later know but be unable to fully and articulately explain to people irl. Kinda like I regularly have to google the joules in a lightning strike to prove to people that a circuit breaker would not, in fact, protect your tv from a lightning strike.
"Now here's where I step back"
*Camera cuts to farther away*
This. This is why you're the best.
Settle down man
@@codycast no, you start getting excited!
@Vap Pri how is this link still here? Why doesn’t UA-cam do a better job removing spam links?
I love how this channel continually manages to explain simple things that I should know, but do not.
As a brit, this blew my mind. But not my electrical outlets thanks to integrated fuses in every plug.
Our country is a fucking depressing cold wet shit tip that needs to sink back into the ocean from which it rose but at least our plugs aren't pure death
British? Cringe.
Are you from the United States?
Thats a British colony too FYI...
@「 Deadpoppin 」 and the USA is now a Chinese colony
As a dutch, I'm like 'why do they use extension cords for mains' and 'how do they get power, return and earth wires all together in such a tiny package'
As the new owner of a house built in 1964, this was equally informative, and terrifying. Thank you.
That’s why AvE calls them “extinction cords.”
AvE gang
That man always comes up with the best alternative names for shitty equipment. And remember, don't stick your pinkie where you wouldn't stick your dinkie.
@@PimpMyDitchWitch He does it so often and so casually and consistently that when I introduced my friend to AvE, my friend thought at first that AvE had a speech impediment.
Good thing I'm living in Germany. Over here, every household circuit is rated at 16A, circuit breakers are dual-purpose (overload AND short-circuit) and you're not allowed to put an extension cord into market that doesn't fit the wiring standard (i.e. certified for 16A). The only thing remotely dangerous is coiling, since (and he doesn't really explain that in detail) coiled wires are just that, coils. And coils have induction, which raises the resistance.
Luckily the overload safety in the circuit breakers reacts to that before the wires overheat.
@Scotty secretly loves Chryslers "Scotty" doesn't sound like a name usually found in ovens so you should be safe. Also, why keep your love a secret? Chryslers are great!
Love your discussion about "safer" at the end. Sometimes, people assume things in black and white when a topic is a spectrum. 2 things can be horrible, but 1 has to be "better" than the other. The fact that (a) is better than (b) does not imply that (a) is "good". People sometimes misinterpret that.
Never underestimate the level of dumb that is possible
Getting shot by a .22 is safer than getting shot by a .50 cal. This does not in any way imply that getting shot by a .22 is safe.
Another consideration, safer also does not need to mean significantly better. Like if thing A is 5/100 safe and B is 6/100 and C is 95/100 then:
C is safe
B is safer than A
B and A are dangerous
I find the main case where people take the comparative to mean the superlative is with the word "better". If I was super sick yesterday somebody could ask me if I'm feeling better. If I say yes they think I'm feeling -good- well.
Exactly. But sorry you had to say this.
I wonder if the interpretation is regional. My understanding of "safer" is exactly as he described, but I live relatively close across the border. I'm curious if "safer" is interpreted differently across the pond.
friendly reminder to all young musicians: SHILL OUT FOR THAT 14 GAUGE EXTENSION CORD, you'd be amazed how easy it is to overload a normal cable with an amp or lighting rig. especially if you decide to use a splitter
Shill out for the 12. Especially if you're a musician.
*shell out
Long extension cords runs need to be downrated. Something like 100 foot 12 gauge cord is only rated for 15 amp not 20
@@johnn3542 Indeed. I dont think he mentioned length in relation to amperage. The common cut off is 0-50ft 20a and 51-100ft 15a for 12 awg. One of the best things you can do is feel the cable and connections with your hand after they have been under load for a bit. The cables simply not making a good connection happens quite often.
@@rdooski Home Depot has some nice soft rubber easy to coil 12 gauge "Rigid" brand in black SJOOW extension cords. Decent price too, if you are into sound, these are the way to go.
Old house was using electric that was not updated since 1972. Dishwasher was running while I made a pot of coffee. Long story short, dishwasher fried coffee machine fried and dishwasher outlet had small fire.
A general note on the American Wire Gauge system: the thickness of the wire corellates to the method of making wire, in that it is drawn through a die, the more times it passes through the die, the thinner the wire. Hence why 12 gauge wire is thicker than 14 gauge and so on.
Neat!
Wait... So wire gauge is not connected to your rifle / shotgun 'gauge'?
In that so many pellets / wires could fit in a certain diameter?
The more I learn of U.S. measuring systems the more convoluted it gets.
And I thought us Dutchies were great at generating bureaucracy.
@@FroggyMosh rifles don't use gauged rounds, only shotguns do. and shotgun gauges mean how many equal sized balls at that gauge can be made with 1 pound of lead. thus, a 20 gauge is smaller than a 12 gauge. IE; 1 pound of lead can make 20 equal sized balls the size of this gauge, but only 12 of this other gauge.
@@kyrisgaming well, it does at least change in size the same way, with 12 gauge being larger than 16 gauge, whether you are talking shot or wire
This is so typically American: Lets name something for the manufacture process instead of the end use or immutable property, that won't be confusing at all for people outside the industry.
The american extension cord is the fuse 😂
Pretty much! LOL
yep, and the cheap cheap ones are "safer". They completely melt before catching fire and the bare wires touch and pop the circuit
You should see what crazy wiring jobs people have made as a DIY project here. There's plenty of videos on electricians coming across somebody's insane wiring job.
Chinese extension cord
@@KeoniPhoenix Back in the 70s when my parents bought their first house, they found some genius had wired the porch light with _speaker wire_ -- those really _thin_ double-wires with no plugs, meant for connecting speakers to a stereo system.
Hey man, I'm an electrician and use your videos just to satiate my need to just listen to things I'm interested in (sometimes background noise and I don't, admittedly, really learn anything more than 10% of what you say) and I have this conversation every week, and you put it better than I do, and I listened 100% this time as it pertains to my career and area of expertise. You did a damn good job here, and I will be using this link to explain it to people that don't understand my nomenclature.
I hear you. I was an electrician for over 40 years and away from the job nobody wanted to talk about electricity. Every day when I got home from work my wife would ask what I had done that day. I would tell her and she would get upset because she didn't understand. One day I said I'll teach you the basics so we can talk about it. We sat at the kitchen table for about two hours with me trying to explain OHMS law. She finally through her hands in the air and said I'll never ask you about electricity again.
@@sparkywatts3072 I only did electrical for a few years, but I would get chewed out "why did you buy that expensive extension cord". Well cause we are powering a an amp hungry appliance and I want a cord that can take it. I taught my family that if an extension cord is getting to warm either find another outlet or a thicker gauge extension cord and keep it long enough to what you need, but not too long and get a fused surge protector.
@@sparkywatts3072 Ha, I gave up trying to explain anything genuinely, I just say its magic.
This should be the top comment.
it has been at least 75 years( maybe longer) that the "N.E.C." has required receptacles be placed 12 linear feet apart from each other. the only time I use an extension cord, it to operate a hedge trimmer!!!!.
Love this channel.
The other nice byproduct of fuses is, because they are rated in amps, they tend to teach the layperson what 'current' even is (at least, on a basic conceptual level.)
I was a signal electrician on the railway in Australia which used 110/120 volts in most situations. When I was an apprentice we dared each other to hold onto it. It was pretty strong but tolerable. I’ve also had 240V hits and the difference is like being chewed on by a house cat and being mauled by a tiger.
Lol, yup. 120V tingles. I've zapped myself a few times and once in recent history it was *zap* "hmm that felt weird" BIL:"Ya you zapped yourself" Me:"No, like it felt weird, shoulda tingled more" Went down to the basement to a junction box and low and behold there was a break in the wire so that 14ga was more like a 22ga(based on the area still making connection).
Definitely! I've only been hit by 240V once, and that was all I needed to forever remind me to quintuple check every breaker box before working on anything. 120V was bearable if I forgot to test a switch or receptacle after turning off a breaker, but I ain't risking that again
i live in a 230V country (Germany) and only once accidentally touched open, live wires. never going to do that again, it hurts like shit
Got zapped with mains voltage while taking apart an electric chainsaw having forgotten to unplug it. It was the weirdest sensation having to manually realise "hey I'm being shocked I need to move my hand" since my reflexes didn't pull me away.
@@mannmanuel7762 yeah it’s massive. I got 240v from one hand to the other hand through my heart cutting through old wiring that I thought I had disconnected but the supply was coming from somewhere else. Thankfully it was just a short touch.
Remember when household appliances actually came with long cords so you didn't have to use an extension cord? Now, even though there's more outlets, the household appliance cord is maybe 2 ft long.
Where did you find one with 2ft of cord? I would kill to get that long a cord.
@@Egilhelmson : you've, Sir, just won the Internet. For a day, but yeah!
But if your appliance had a 6ft cord a small child could get ahold of it and pull it off the counter on themself. Then you'd have to take some personal responsibility to make sure that didn't happen...and we all know it's easier to just sue a company for letting that even be a possibility.
@@blackmesaresearch2 6 feet would actually be burdensome in most situations; folks would be thrilled with 2 or 3.
I love older houses, but the good thing about new houses they put more than one outlet in each room. If there is a wall, it should have an outlet, or two.
As a firefighter, I love your use of FLIR for the visual demonstrations (especially at 11:46). I think the only saving grace these days is the push for energy efficiency, which *can* put less load on things like extension cords. Strands of incandescent C9 Christmas lights could easily overload a cheap extension cord, whereas LED C9 lights draw just a tiny fraction of the amps that incandescent do.
Of course, greater awareness of UL Listing and other fire safety tips help as well.
I don't know if you've been in it long enough. But has there been a reasonable decrease in house fires in the last 20 years? Just from the efficiency in modern things, TVs, av, lights, / other stuff
What makes this channel so great is not just the entertainment value and snarky host, it’s the fact that he is able to clearly deliver the script in a way that appears as though there is no script and he’s speaking naturally as if there was no script. It’s a very rare and valuable skill I wish all channels had.
This explains why US electrical outlets look so upset.
yeah.. the constant expression of astonishment that nothing has caught on fire yet
D=
It's modeled after the suffering gaze of the ancient God that Americans drove underground to power our cities
come to canada upside3 down land where plugs cant be used as designed anymore
😮
Down here in Australia all our domestic leads are always rated for the full draw. There's no "light duty" extension cables here.
I still cant believe we can still buy this crap here in the US. At least all of the DIYers I know including me are smart about buying really nice extension cables.
Plenty of idiots import Ext cables from China
Not really true. Here in Australia our extension leads and power points are typically 10 Amps / 2400 Watts, but the circuit and breaker are at least 15 or 20 Amps. So, you can overload the socket, and the extension lead without blowing the circuit breaker in the "fuse box". You do have to use double adapters to do it though, because power boards all have 10 Amp circuit breakers, and no single device should draw more than 10 Amps.
@@PeterJacksonOfAdelaide The fact that Australia works on 240V also helps. At the same wire gauge, you can safely suck twice the power without overheating the wire. With safe plugs/pins, you don't get that much risk of electrocution (arching still may remain a problem. Ah, yes, and driving nails into live power cables when installing insulation during a global financial crisis, but we don't get those that often... do we?)
I dunno what the actual rules are here in northern Europe, but I've checked all my extension cords, and they're all rated for over 3500W, no matter how cheap the brand is, or how many outlets it has. That's roughly 15 ampere at 230V. Having more than a 16A fuse on your circuit is pretty unusual here. Most are 10A or 15/16A.
20A is rarely used except for outlets you expect to put high-powered stuff on. Even then, with our extension cords being rated for 3500W, you'd almost need to actively try to overload them. Even if I attached my TV, three consoles and two desktop computers with their monitors to the same extension cord, I wouldn't get close to 3500W.
I love how our outlets look like someone who's getting shocked.
I like to believe that that's intentional and there were focus group studies involving small children and outlet designs.
@@Hamachingo - Yep, putting a cartoon face on something will keep kids away
Because they're all installed upside down.
@@loweffortgaming2593 I've heard about that.
@@loweffortgaming2593 Yup. Except at hospitals, where they followed codes.
Literally came across one of these today...without my phone...without saying a word...but thinking this thing's dangerous...and yet somehow UA-cam decided today is the day I should rewatch this video 😵💫
A helpful way to understand why gauge numbers seem to be backwards (as in a smaller # means bigger wire) is to remember that they are indicative of how many of something can be made from a given amount of material. In this case, copper for wire. For example, let’s suppose I can make 14 wires from one pound of wire. If I decide instead to use up that pound of copper and only make 12 wires of the same length, then they would necessarily be a little thicker because I had more copper for each one.
Not exactly, but close. Shotgun gauges are based on how many lead balls the diameter of the barrel can be made from a pound of lead, but wire gauges were originally based on how many times a wire had to be drawn through a die to make that size of wire.
@@joekelley1734 I don't think they were providing an explanation but rather a way to recall.
While that's an explanation, it's still a terrible naming scheme. The vast majority of people interacting with the product are going to be downstream from manufacturing and have no reason to care and quite possibly no knowledge of why it's so unintuitive.
@@Belgand not terrible - one needs only educate themselves on the reasoning for the nomenclature. Just like Blue Ray vs DVD, not everything can be immediately intelligible without effort ahead of time.
just use the metric system, like anybody else
I'm really confused; how does this relate to latent heat and the refrigeration cycle?
😂👍
You see, this is another example of how inefficient resistive heating is!
Well, if you start an electrical fire, that's a lot of heat.
it does if you plug in a refrigerator, freezer, or air conditioner with an extension cord.
"Imagine a coffee-maker, a microwave, and a toaster are all on the same circuit."
Don't have to. You just described my kitchen, along with a wall-mounted can opener. They're even in the same outlet, thanks to a splitter.
Yes I have tripped the breaker by running everything at once, why do you ask?
It's interesting that here in Australia we have similar Amp ratings, but due to 240v you can shove three 1500 watt devices on there and still have an amp or two spare headroom
I made a comment similar to yours then scrolled down and found a couple of other kitchen circuit overload comments then found yours. Kitchen wiring is janky.
This is why I run everything, except single items on multiplug extensions with built in circuit breakers and anything delicate with surge protectors.
Me glancing under my desk and realizing this is gonna be a video essay on why I'm sitting in the middle of an elaborate fire hazard
Yeah... my house (built in the 40s I think) has 5 sets of wall outlets, all on the same breaker though. If I try to run any two devices at once in my kitchen the breaker goes. the only exception is the stove/oven which is clearly on it's own circuit but the rest of the kitchen, lights included, is all on one circuit and it sucks so bad. If I forget I started the kettle and try to make toast, for example, the kitchen goes completely dark - that's also where the breaker is located so now I'm fixing it in the dark if this happens before or after daylight.
Oh and the outlets that are part of the stove don't work anymore for some reason so literally everything else is one-at-a-time. Microwave, toaster, kettle, food-processer, rice cooker, can-opener, coffee-grinder, you name it. They all blow the breaker if used two devices at a time.
My coffee maker is in another room though, just so it's on a different circuit, because I always need coffee.
Not me watching this with 2 extension cords in my room
The fuse box in my house is literally directly across from the shower head in the bathroom. The door on the box does not close completely.
Also the kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms are on ONE FUSE. Unsurprisingly, the high score for "most times the fuse has been blown in a day" is currently 4.
I lived in an ancient house that had been turned into cheap apartments by the local slum-lords when I was first out of school that was about that bad. Poor people don't deserve fire safety! Pah.
Damn, and I thought my house was bad. The circuits make no sense, but at least the kitchen is only on the same circuit as the living room, so we just have to make sure not to turn on the window ac and microwave at the same time.
You have fuses instead of circuit breakers? How old is your house, anyway?
@@scotpens Mine is from the 70s and we have fuses (and aluminum wiring). Although the panel is kinda weird, since there is one single breaker above the fuses, to cut the power to the whole house. I don't even know if it's a breaker or just a switch
Maybe you should consider getting an electrician in to upgrade that. You know, before your house burns down.
"Ring mains, what were you thinking?". Mainly, we were thinking about the price of copper. Especially post-war, when there was a lot of (re-)building.
Read about knob-and-tube wiring and suddenly ring mains seem like a reasonable option.
When we rewired my house in England, we ran separate rings to each room & a dedicated spur for the TV & hi-fi sockets, to avoid noise.
@@scottd9448 how much of a ballache was it to re-wire your house? Just curious, kind of want to do it myself in a few years
What are the main downsides to ring mains? My dad always raves on about how great and simple they are.
@@leftysheppey You have to rip out the ceiling, floor & depending on the construction of the walls, those too.
You don't want to be living there at the time.
Me warming feet on the bundle of wires under my computer desk:
👁👄👁
my computer case that i still forgot to put the cover on for 5 months now warming my feet as i play beamng while running an ai model and my gpu goes to 101%
@@BigOlSmellyFlashlight honestly if it's just a glass side panel leave it off for the best air temperatures, lol just don't short it out by touching it with your static discharge from your toes. Maybe find a metal mesh side panel with 2-3mm holes to enclose the computer away from EMI/EMC for anyone nearby with a pacemaker or sensitive electronics doesn't go tripping.
Who the heck warms their feet in the middle of summer!?
Australians because it is winter over there
Thank you for pointing out the lack of air flow is why the coiled extension cord gets hot. So many people think the coil causes resistance making it heat up more
I agree about the use of the word "safer", as in my mind, safety is an absence of danger, and I don't see any other way to interpret it. So it baffles me that people would interpret the word "safer" to be meant as "100% safe" when it's clearly meant as a comparison relative to something else. I see nothing wrong with stating something to the effect of "jumping off a 15 foot ledge is safer than jumping off a 200 foot ledge". There is danger in both activities and nothing I've said implies that you should jump from a 15 foot ledge, you certainly should not.
Comfortable people are always finding new ways to be ignorant.
@@AlphaCarinae that is a great analogy
The fact that he explained how he interprets "safer" to the audience proves to me this dude is solid AF as a person. The fact he "needed" to explain is what scares me. Great videos. 👍
Very well put. It's true you say a car with air bags is safer than a car without it doesn't mean you won't get injured the likelihood of getting injured has slightly decreased people tend to take the word for face value.
The danger if something happens is lower, but there is still a risk.
I just realized nobody ever thanks all the people who fund this channel except the very guy who puts in all the work.
Thanks, donors. You have good taste and are funding stuff that is somehow both historical, educational, entertaining and a fourth thing.
yes! Well put!
So how much are you gonna "charge" me ?? 😁
Thank you so much for this video. We are redoing our kitchen and there has been some wiring issues. My husband has tried to explain it to me but I just didn't get it. This was broken down and so much easier to understand. :D
There are rental houses in the US that still have cloth insulated wiring.
Source: I rented one. It was terrifying knowing that our walls were basically wired to catch on fire.
Theres tons of houses with tube and knob wiring and lead pipes still… source; im a commercial and residential plumber. When I bought my house I had to demo everything. Youd be surprised at how many hazards exist. Including asbestos insulation, Plaster, etc.
@@swagkillayolonoscopesggoh yeah asbestos everywhere. Most places have it grandfathered in
I mean there's lead paint still around and you think they care about some cloth or lead pipes hidden in their house behind the walls. I bet they have a fuse box to make it a combo
I didn’t even know they used to insulate wiring with cloth until now. That sounds terrifying.
Your house probably also had aluminum instead of copper wire. Aluminum wiring was actually code until sometime in the 1970s (in the US; I don't know about other countries).
And that’s why I began using the mouthful “less unsafe”, because I felt “safer” was too often taken to mean “has some safety”, and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that it was not safe. Well, that and I like writing obnoxiously.
Actually, that’s probably the main reason.
In the way that it's "less unsafe" to climb a ladder on top of scaffolding without a firecracker in your mouth as opposed to with a firecracker in your mouth?
@@thegardenofeatin5965 as long as you wear head protection!
People could just learn how words work
This is the problem with other words as well. When adverts use the phrase "healthier", people think "oh that means it's healthy!", when fact of the matter is that while replacing sugar in soft drinks with artificial sweeteners might make them "healthier", it still doesn't make them *HEALTHY*
(Yes I know there's still a massive debate on the effects of artificial sweeteners).
Oh I can relate to you so much. Writing in the most obnoxious way possible just gives me some strange kind of joy😂
There is a reason why extension cords in Germany are always rated to 16A, the maximum allowed by any circuit breaker with normal outlets connected to it. Also I think you should have mentioned that the circuit breaker doesnt trip immediately when you only overload them slightly
They aren't, for 16A 1.5mm² is widly considered safe here. Getting cords with no fuse and the same plug with only 1.0mm² wiring is easy even 0.75mm² is possible and has the same certificates then the 1.5mm² one. so yeah ... 230V is guilty of the same shit
Ah that's reassuring. I was going to go and check all of ours. German houses do not have a lot of plugs, at least not if they are older than about 1980.
@Steve Dave I just checked every hardware store´s website in Austria. There is not a single extension cord or power strip rated for less than 16A. There are some rated for 2,5A but those have a different connector where you cant plug in high power appliances, only phone chargers for example.
Since 2009 all extensions cords with a less than 1,5mm² are banned or are required to include a fuse.
The UK puts max 13A fuses in plugs. In use, these are good for a fraction over 20A :) Even where wiring is rated 15A !
@Steve Dave you are wrong, there sometimes is not even rating on those power strips because they are always safe
"And if you decide to microwave some bacon..."
Overloading a circuit, and doing something *truly* terrible.
There's nothing wrong with microwaving bacon. Spending half an hour and making a mess cooking bacon every morning isn't feasible. Com the pack of bacon and microwave it when you want it. Tastes almost exactly the same.
@@xenonram Yeah naw.
@@xenonram 🤢🤮🤢
Bacon microwaved between two paper towels is actually fairly decent. About 30 seconds per strip
@@xenonram Yeah, nah dawg. I'm the most pathetic chef in the world and even I think you're crazy
I have no idea how you showed up in my feed, but so grateful this video did. Love the clear, passionate, knowledgeable presentation!
"This is the point where I step back" *camera zooms back*
Puns are great, especially quiet visual puns.
I also noticed that.
By the way, did you watch with the closed captioning on? If you haven't, go ahead and do it; it's worth it, even if your hearing is perfect.
@@JonesNate Thank you for letting us know! It's great! 😂😁
@@JonesNate oh yeah, his captions are top notch. Almost as good as Sean Hogan's (uncertain on that name)
Now I'm terrified of every plug in my house, thanks.
Dont be, learn about amperage and device power draw.
I now live like a caveman and suspicious of electrickery
You should be far more terrified of other people driving on roads.
move to the UK
People will never relearn a proper use of old technology. That's why replacement is a thing that mroe often happens, like with USB-C
"it boosts engagement" should be your official catchphrase. you can even use nonsensically
His mention of boosting engagement boosted engagement.
plugging in this cord boosts engagement
UA-cam generator
7:19 One thing to note: while the individual wires used in Romex are THHN wire, electricians dont refer to Romex as THHN. THHN is used to refer to individual wires that come on a spool, while the official name for Romex is NM-B. NM-B stands for Non-Metallic sheathed cable type B. Type B means it has a higher heat rating. THHN and NM-B are recognized as two separate types of conductors/cables in the NEC.
Thanks. I was hoping someone had addressed that. To take it a step further, while the conductors may be functionally the same as thhn, they are not technically the same as they aren't labeled as such. You can't strip the conductors fom NM-B and use it as individual conductors, for example in conduit.
The most disturbing part of this was "microwave some bacon"
Tbf, you can microwave bacon quite well. I rarely do it, but wrapped in kitchen crepe, you can quickly heat it, then throw it in the pan for a significantly shorter time span because it just isn't bacon otherwise. Saves on cleanup, wastes paper.
@@UnDeaDCyBorg "creepy paper"
I prefer microwave bacon, it's faster, easier, and frankly less greasy which i like
It's ok - americans aren't allowed proper bacon, so harm was done by him microwaving that sliced pig.
Microwaved bacon is actually good. It's crispier and less greasy
Having worked in life safety, anecdotally, about 75% of the fires I worked in the aftermath of were caused by consumer electronics and extension cords (bad charging cables, overloaded or improperly used extensions), and maybe 25% cigarettes. And NOTHING ELSE. 🤷🏻♂️
a lot of fires are started in the kitchen, by overheated cooking oil, and un- attended of course!!!!
made in China toasters burned to the ground 250,000 American homes in the 1980's. That's the equivalent destruction of a nuclear bomb.
Not one recall of the product. Can't sue the Commie Chinese.
But, Bill Clinton declassified nuclear missile guidance systems and sold it to the Chinese Communists, all perfectly legal treason.
and those damn electric blankets in the 1970’s 😡😡😡😡👍
A few years ago, a neighbour of mine died in a fire which was started by a candle on her windowsill ...
This was in a country where the electrical safety standards are higher than in the US, though.
The context for why we get drilled fear into us about electricity makes a little more sense now, so thanks. *looks around at oh so many power strip*
Whoever drilled that fear into you was wrong. They should have just explained how it works. Luckily our schools in the US are run by mostly dim bulbs with little to no actual life skills.
@@EclecticBuddha No electricity is dangerous.
I remember having to explain to the accommodation staff in my college that it was perfectly safe having an extension lead with a TV, DVD player and PS2 plugged in. The total current was only around 2 Amps with everything switched on. They still didn't get it.
hehe heh heh.....my house was built in 48 and there is chicken wire in the walls,,,,how have I not died yet?
Power strips are fine in most cases, many many of those annoying little things we end up needing so many plugs for draw very little current, though anything on the large end really should go to something better (though many decent power strips have built in overload protection to prevent stuff like this).
You have an absolute fantastic grasp on how electrical works. You didn’t say anything wrong at all. I’m an electrician and I endorse this message.
No seriously, you know your stuff.