I actually use one of these, and have one in my office right now. I remove the one end and tape the wires every time i am finished with it.
Picture a control panel that has not been installed yet. It will have a terminal block that has a terminals marked H, N and ground connection that will, when installed, be connected to a power source. It also has a receptacle for laptop power.
To power up the panel off site you would have to use a “Cheater” cord. Basically that is a plug leading to bare wires. You would have to make all three connections and then remove them to switch to a different panel. Each time you do this you have to make sure you landed them correctly and you do not have any stringers.
If you build and use this cord you can back feed power into the panel safely and correctly every time without continually making and removing wiring connections. The H, N and ground terminals have not been landed so you cant have two power sources feeding in
On mine, I have a switch in the middle of the cord so you can plug it in and then throw the switch while not being in front of it. It is never wise to have your hands or face in a panel the first time you power it up. Those panel builders usually get it right 99% of the time.
For those who think it is still dangerous , remember the words of Super chicken.
… unless you are a cheap jackass, and have a desire to kill any lineman that are working on downed power lines because you can’t be arsed to pull the main breaker when you have your generator back-feeding your house.
Now where did I put that Etherkiller cable… (huh?)
Got a trash can of Styrofoam peanuts, you can have em for free
You can drop by on the weekend and pick em up from me
But the trash can ain’t part of the deal
Only givin’ you the peanuts, get real
Don’t have no Hefty bags, so bring your own
Don’t bug me with questions on the phone
Don’t ask for help, don’t waste my time
And don’t complain, cause they won’t cost you a dime
Just ask yourself
Do you want my Styrofoam peanuts?
You can have my Styrofoam peanuts
Do you want my Styrofoam peanuts?
You can have 'em all
I once made a cord like this for the legitimate purposes of using extension cords as speaker wires for testing different series/parallel configurations easily. I have certainly repurposed extension cords into pigtail power cords and outlets many times.
Point being that there is a right-to-hack element and any absolutism about never allowing modifications is similar to enforcement of walled gardens like app stores instead of just letting us program our hardware to do what we want, safety be damned.
It reminds me of how knife switches were readily available in my small town hardware store when I was a youth. I am sure many people hooked them up to 120v circuits and killed themselves but there was something good and right about being aware of the danger and using your head rather than connector compatibility to be safe.
Having said all that, I would never let my mother near a cord like this.
Exactly. When I used to work at a hardware store I’d inevitably have this conversation every November/December.
Them: Hi. Do you have an extension cord with the plug bit on both ends?
Me: You ran your Christmas lights backwards, didn’t you?
Them: …
Them: yes
Me: No, we don’t carry anything like that. Yes, you can buy the parts here, but if you make it yourself and have any kind of problem your insurance company will just point and laugh while they deny your claim.
Me: Here, let me show you our extra-long outdoor extension cords.
This was my thought too. If someone just got done hanging Christmas lights on their gutter or tree only to realize the female connector was at the outlet end then this would be handy.
Even then it’s just a cure for laziness, though sometimes laziness trumps the risk of death. I mean, have you ever been to YouTube?
I was in an escape room once, and the goal was to light up one of these:
Power could only be turned on by flipping a bunch of switches to the correct position and the designers of the room thought they were clever by clamping down the plug so you wouldn’t just plug it in to a different outlet. But, there’s an outlet on that lamp… and we needed the light near a functioning outlet… and we had the wires to do it. Being only a game, we didn’t do it of course… but if it had been a life-or-death situation, it would have been an option.
They are known as suicide cables. Except they mostly end up killing linemen. People want them to connect their generators into their house the cheapest, most illegal way possible; because there are a lot of selfish libertarian assholes in the world who can’t be bothered to understand why laws are a thing.
Husband, who is a retired high voltage lineman, says he removed many of these during his 20 years as a troubleshooter for local electrical utility. He would withdraw for safety if power stealer would give him lip. He would call Sheriff or police and have to wait until 2 arrived because they were aware of dangerous householders. Husband having been sent solo by his dispatchers to cut unauthorized power source. More than one way electricity can be hazardous.
While I wouldn’t dare to do this with an electric installation, I have pneumatic hose with two male connectors that I use to join two pneumatic installations together. While it isn’t dangerous, connecting or disconnecting it while one installation has pressure is amazingly annoying - the free end of the hose swings wildly until it’s connected
So I am curious. How is this dangerous when I cut the main breaker then power the dead loop with this cable? Do linemen have a special power that when it’s a libretarian house they can magically reconnect the dead loop to the mains? A circuit is a circuit.
There are safe ways to do this that ensure the house is disconnected from the grid. Either a transfer switch or (I forget the name) a block that can be installed in such a way that only one “source” can be connected to your house at a time.
Who said anything about enforcement? Nobody is banning you from buying two plugs and wiring them together for whatever you want. This thread is entirely about people rightfully scared of such a cord, mixed with genuine curiosity about why people apparently keep asking that hardware store to sell them one.
I believe the main (pardon the pun) issue is that the tail wires running to your outlets are only rated for 15 or 20 amps (even 10 in some really old houses). If you backfeed, you are allowing an entire house to feed off of six feet of 14-16ga wire running to that outlet. That wire ‘tis gonna overheat and maybe burn shit down. If you shut off every breaker in the house and only powered up small things at a time (don’t let the furnace start or run the stove) it would be okay. But if you’re doing that, it’s just as easy and still safer to run an extension cord to your one lamp from the generator.
You laugh, but I was once seriously shocked by what amounted to this.
My mom had a vacuum cleaner with a powered attachment. It broke one day, and (this being the 1980s, when household goods were actually repaired when they broke) she took it to the vacuum cleaner repair guy. Then she told me to vacuum the car.
Being a churlish little shit, I resisted for some time. When I finally got around to it, the mini-plug that connected the main body of the vacuum to the powered attachment grazed my face, zapping me with house current. The repair guys had accidentally replaced the female plug from the vacuum body with a male plug, and I hadn’t noticed because I wasn’t using the attachment.
Mom didn’t believe me when I told her, even though it had left a red welt on my face, because she thought I was trying to get out of housework. THANKS MOM.
