We had one of these bad boys powering my Dad’s shop when I was younger. The look on my Dad’s face when I was troubleshooting why the power to the shop went out was priceless. Communication saves lives, kids. It certainly did mine. Reasonable electrical wiring will do that in place of communication.
The previous owner of my house had a 50 amp outlet that he used to backfeed power with a portable generator when the power was out. Now, there’s no doubt in my mind he was careful to turn off the house’s main breaker first, but, still… We had the correct receptacle and interlock installed in the main panel for a few hundred dollars.
I mentioned it to one of the neighbors, and he said, “Dave was doing that?!” He was an electrician or a lineman and was NOT happy to hear this.
There are other examples of “Davegineering” in this house, of course. I think my favorite was the wire that was randomly shorting on the metal box in the drop ceiling, because he didn’t use a strain relief…
I don’t understand this.
Do your Christmas light end with a female electrical socket?
Could you not just run an extension cord from the male end to the socket though?
EDIT: Never mind…says exactly that in the picture.
The idea is that the string of lights has a male end and a female end. That way you can have several daisy chained and just plug the one with the male end into the outlet. But if you plan it wrong then you may end up with the wrong end in the wrong place, in which case yeah, use an extension cord or hang the lights all over again.
Oh and it’s actually relatively safe this way… Each string of lights normally has a fuse in it, so it prevents the cords from carrying more current than they are designed for.
I have had this conversation multiple times, about multiple cable types, while in electronics sales.
What’s the best analogy or wording you’ve found for conveying the nature of the problem to people?
americans…
The electrical ones don’t exist because it would mean you have exposed metal that is carrying current when a human touches it. However, for some odd reason you can buy it for control panels.
