I have heard there are ways to use these to back feed power from a generator into a house’s system, at least on one breaker, but by definition that bypasses the breaker panel, and the only safe way to use your generator for your house is with a proper cutover installed by an electrician. I can think of literally no other use for one of these cords, except maybe fixing your fuck up if you install Christmas lights backwards.
So yeah, dumb, dumb idea.
This is all reasonably accurate. Source: electrician, who worked at a supply store for a while. I’ve had people ask how to make all kinds of stupid cords.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t fool with electricity
Unionized Kobold electricians. Hmm.
It also backfeeds the grid and can kill someone working on the lines.
This is the real issue and why you need a modern transfer switch. Lineman is working on the transformer on the pole, “it’s fine we cut it off upstream and I checked” and BOOM anyway
My friend’s house does this with their generator. There is a lockout on the breaker, and the main must be off to move it and open the one that feeds the back porch where they tie the generator in. Once the breakers are cycled, they can plug the generator into the outlet on the porch, and it runs there, sheltered from the weather. When the main power is working again, they turn off the generator, remove the cord, disable the breaker, toggle the lockout bar, and turn the main back on. The particular outlet on the porch is useless when using grid power because of this setup.
I’ve heard the Christmas lights one before too, but I never got it. How do (American) Christmas lights work that you’d need one of these cords?
In North America, Christmas lights usually have a plug end and a socket end so you can connect multiple strings together in series.
If you accidentally put the plug end at the top of the tree, it might be tempting to try to buy or make one of these cords so you don’t have to take the lights down and redo them.
It is as dumb and lazy as it sounds.
So if I understand it correctly, if you were to use this “solution”, you’d leave live exposed prongs on one end of the lights, right?
Cause that would make it even dumber than I had imagined lmao
Yup. American Christmas lights basically ARE very thin extension cords with the bulbs (hopefully) wired in parallel. Back in the day they were pretty much all incandescent and in series, and a single burned out bulb meant everything went out and Junior got a joyous new holiday chore!
Yep. Exactly right.
There are voltage converters (230V<->120V) that have female connectors in both ends. So if DIY guys are playing with tech from other continents.
Any serious DIY person can just splice an extra male plug onto a cord faster than driving to the store and reading this sign.
It is written in the book of Leviticus: “It shall be unclean for one end of an electric cord to match the other”
Holy shit, this is what that part in the bible is actually about. People back then just didn’t know about electricity so they thought it was about gay people.
honestly tho. if the Torah is legit its advice should apply to the future too. haShem wouldn’t just have been writing to Moishe’s time.
No idea how and why but my dad once had a cable like that in his workshop.
Short story: we were having a party, bit drunk and wanted power for the bigger speakers, needed an extension, rummaged around and found this one. Of course didn’t check the ends, plugged it in and then thought “oh what a weird male adapter there, lets take it…bzzzzt”.
Have a tiny burn scar on my hand now, luckily nothing else happened. The cable got dismantled afterwards, but I still don’t know why it was there in the first place, he is a pretty good handyman normally.
What if I yell “no homo!” when I plug it in?
where are you plugging it in?
I mean, there’s only one place for double-headed items to be safely used and it isn’t in the workshop.
…the kitchen?
Sorry, what is “this time of the year”? Suicide September?
People use them to make their generators power their homes, by adding power into an outlet.
So, whatever time of year power outages are likely to happen in this area.
Holy shit, does that work?
I’m only familiar with having a generator properly wired into the house system at the panel, not some electrical Uno Reverse.
It does, but it’s super dangerous to do unless you have it wired up properly. Proper installations will use a special connector so you can’t plug anything else into that receptical, and will have it interlocked against the main breaker - you can’t plug anything in without disconnecting from the grid. The dangers of doing it amateur-hour are:
- You now have a cable that you can unplug and have live ends exposed - which if you don’t realize is connected to an active generator is super dangerous, and even if you do one slip and you are now the ground conductor
- If you connect the generator while still connected to the grid, your generator is almost certainly going to be out of phase. This will probably cause damage to your generator and anything else plugged in at the time
- If you don’t have an interlock and run the generator while connected to the grid (say during a power outage) you will be back-feeding power into the grid. This is super dangerous for anyone coming to fix the outage, as things that they’ve isolated to fix can still end up being live
Note that this interlock is also required if you have solar - although it’s usually in the form of an automatic breaker that will disconnect and put the circuit into “island mode” if it detects a loss of grid supply
I did it last week. We were out of power for about 30 hours. But I actually have a degree in Computer Engineering, and I did it with a friend who is a professional Electrician.
It is indeed EXTREMELY dangerous. If you don’t know what you’re doing, or make a mistake, best case scenario, you fry your generator. Worst case, you electrocute a lineman from the power company, who isn’t expecting lines to be live when there’s an outage, because yes, if you feed power into your house, that will flow OUT of your house onto the main lines (to some extent), if you let it. You could end up trying to power your whole block on your little gas generator.
We made sure both the indoor and outdoor main power shutoffs for the house were turned off, as well as all breakers. Then we unplugged the oven, and used that for the feed from the generator. Then we gradually re-activated breakers so as not to add too much load to the generator at once. Ultimately, we were able to run the whole house, except for the AC compressor, which the generator actually would have had enough power to run, but not to kick-start.
The proper way to hook up a generator to feed your house is to install an “inlet” which is both nominatively and physically the opposite of an outlet: instead of holes going into a box, you have prongs sticking out of a box. Generally, it’ll be one of the big fat 4-pronged round cables, like what your oven might use. That’ll feed down to a large double-breaker, in the top-right slot of your breaker panel. That breaker stays off until you want to run a generator, and, to meet code, you have to also install a special bracket that prevents you from turning this breaker off without turning off the primary feed for the whole house. Still kinda dangerous, but they make those brackets surprisingly foolproof.
except for the AC compressor, which the generator actually would have had enough power to run, but not to kick-start.
This sentence triggered my PTSD. Imagine, if you will, a world where executives insist that datacenter AC be put on UPS battery. A world where those same executives declare that a different datacenter is just fine running at 95% power capacity because “it’s not 100%.” A world where inrush current does not exist. Except it does exist, but all professional advice is ignored until there are consequences. And even after such consequences are realized, one of those same executives still tries to run his home sump pump off of a desktop UPS during a power outage, pops it immediately, then goes and gets another from the office, which also pops immediately.
The sign in OP’s post will always be relevant somewhere.
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I’m gonna guess winter, hanging Christmas lights. People string up their lights and then realize far too late that they put two strands with female ends facing each other and instead of restringing they look for a male-to-male cord to bridge the gap.
A little live wire shouldn’t stand in the way of holiday cheer, after all.
My granpa once assigned a master electrician to make an extension cord after he accidently cut the cable of his hedge trimmer. The electrician built him a male2male cord with the female part on the machine. My granpa almost got electrocuted. 🤦♂️
What would they even be used for except to short a circuit?
Some genius won’t pay attention to the orientation of a christmas light display while he’s putting them up, he’ll go to plug them in, and they’ll be the wrong way, so he’ll want an “adapter.”
I will just regurgitate what I’ve heard. I think they are used in case power goes out and you have a generator. You need to disconnect from the power grid first, but it should then allow you to power tour house with the generator. It sounds more like a US thing.
Yes, this would technically work. Although, it would only power the hot leg the outlet is connected to which only feeds part of the house.
It’s very dangerous for a variety of reasons. Especially if you forget to shut off the mains breaker. The transformer can backfeed power down the line at line voltages, creating a shock hazard for lineman or anyone else who might have contact with the line.
Wouldn’t any repair worker ground anything they work on first, or assume it is live? I am not even a proper electrician, but “short-circuited and grounded, or treat it as live” has been the rule forever.
Not an electrician, but I would imagine the danger being if the technician checked the wire was off locally, started work and then the home generator starts feeding mid work.
Connecting this to two plugs on the same circuit won’t short anything unless one of the outlets is wired incorrectly.
They’re used to backfeed power to your house from a generator during power outages. Technically not legal to use, but most people aren’t going to pay $1k for a proper transfer switch. They come with the caveat of ‘not to be operated by fuckwits’ since you can kill a linesman if you don’t flip your main breaker before using them.
The only time I’ve ever seen one in use was a friend that had a shed that was powered with lights etc. He had an external plug box on the shed, and would use one of these to jumper from his extension cord to that external plug. It worked, but I shuddered when I saw it.
… and you could easily fix the whole situation by having the shed run a male extension cord out that could be plugged into the generator.
It would also be infinitely more whimsical, since it’d make the shed look like a little appliance with its own chord. Or paint everything and call it a tail, the possibilities are endless.
“Well, let me just plug in the shed real quick”
“this time of year” is 100% christmas.
from people putting up lights, probably trying to run remote power to a box with an extension cord, or because they installed half their lights backward and need this to bridge between the two sets because they rather embrace the danger than redo all the work.
I sell so many of these around Xmas time, I just make them myself with scissors and electric tape.
Take it down, darwin demands sacrifice, lest we be riddled with stupidity.
Except that sometimes, those idiots could take people down with them. That electrical fire might spread to another house, and the person getting electrocuted might not be the idiot.
Imagine I’m making the most exasperated, annoyed, disapponted noise possible.
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Today I learned that by being someone’s neighbor, I’m viewed as “choosing to engage with them”.
He didn’t take it to the store and tape it to the shelf so it could NOT be there
K
No gay cords allowed!
The gay cords are extra powerful in Europe with a spicy 230v
1 European gay is equivalent to 1.91 american gays
A former coworker was abroad most of the time. Still, his power meter showed lots of usage during his absence. A tenant in the same house had used such a cord to leech power across the common laundry room.
Now that coworker knew his way about electricity. So instead of the 220V between common and a phase, he rewired his washing machine socket to two different phases, aka 380V, and left for a week.
When he came back, he saw a number of kitchen- and other appliances waiting for trash collection.
3 phase going to a house?
Absolutely normal here. Three phases, now 400 instead of 380V back then, 64A. Standard house connection.
In the States the new standard is 240V @ 200 amps, split phase. Most circuits are half of a phase (120V) but there are 240V circuits for load-heavy appliances like stoves and air conditioning. I’ve heard some people have an extra 240V socket in their kitchens just for tea kettles.
These-phase 400V is the standard house connection here in Europe. Wall sockets are 240V/16A (any phase to neutral), but we also have devices running on three phases, like the oven or the geyser in the kitchen.
Do they put a third of the panel on each phase?
Short answer: Yes.
There are actually so-called “three phase combs” for the fuse panels: Sample Image. You put your fuses on a hat rail (in this case eight fuses, but those combs are available in different sizes), you stick that comb in from below and tighten up the screws. Then you connect the three phases to the connections on the left, or, in some fuse boxes, screw them right onto the bus bars.
That is so clever! I hate working with high voltage but am still fascinated by it.
It’s OK - I’m only going to use the suicide cord for my fractal wood-burning project.
So what you are telling me is that I can just make one at home?
Yes, but only once.
No.
Joke’s on them I can make one myself
But the paper said you shouldn’t
