I always check stuff like this with new appliances, but I guess there's some people who don't....
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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There’s a reason why kitchen appliances in general have such short 3ft cables. There also a reason why modern kitchens built to code have outlets every 3 ft. Too many people lburned the house down with extension cables strewn across the sink and electrocuted now we can’t have nice things.
Besides the electrocution hazard, another problem (in the US) is that someone allowed non fused 16 and 18 gauge extension cables on the market. We should only have 14 and 12 (or start putting fuses on the cords like some other countries)
14 should be for "light duty" like electronics or lamps. What you don't tell people is that pretty much anything inside the house will run fine on 14awg wire.
12 for everything "heavy duty".
The idea is people use the same wire that matches what their breakers are rated for. A 20amp breaker doesn't know that the 100ft 18 gauge extension cord feeding 3 surge protectors with every kitchen device and the "diy powered garage" is going to melt long before 20amps.
Is it overkill? yes. If you draw too much current will the wire overheat and burn down your house? Not if the breaker trips first.
Your measuring systems never cease to amaze me. This one is even more confusing than measuring socket wrenches in fractal inches.
Wait until you learn how we measure thin steel thickness.
At this point I'm almost afraid to ask, but I guess I need to know. How do you measure thin steel thickness?
With the Sheet Metal Gauge!
It's the same as wire gauge, but the scale is different per material!
For steel
Pretty much anything larger than 1/8th of an inch (3.2mm), we just use the measurement (in inches).
Why? Because we don't have a common measurement unit smaller than an inch. There probably is one, but no one commonly uses it. Coming up with a gauge scale is actually easier than say .0123 inch thick. Say "12 gauge wire" and everyone (who knows about it), knows exactly what you're talking about.
Pretty much anything below 1/32 (0.8mm) of an inch, we'll switch to decimals. 0.0001 inch is valid with no common way to make that neater. No such thing as 1 mili-inch.
Remind me, what is the cost of living in Europe?
.001" is a thou or mil (1/1000 of an inch). That is commonly understood in any industry that requires that precision and also doesn't already work in metric by default. 0.0001 would be 0.1 thou, but honestly any time I've ever seen anybody need more precision than a whole number thou, they worked in microns or nanometers.
I thought you have "thou" (thousandth of an inch) for that?
Oh! I just remembered that the size of shotgun shell pellets are calculated that way. Take a fixed amount of lead and the gauge (we call it caliber) og the pellets is defined by how many of them you can make from that lump of lead.
Here in Norway it's more expensive to live than ever. The interest is high and all other prices on have balooned this year, so the prices are too damn high. But I guess that is true for most countries.
Many people believe we are on the verge of a housing bubble bursting within a few years, so that might be a good time to relocate.
There's the "mil" which is just a thousandth of an inch, also called "thou". Not really that rare, however sufficiently precise measurement equipment probably was rare when the gauge standards were conceived
Sorry, but we don't use wire diameter. We use cross section.
That's why if you absolutely need an extension cable, you should get one that's just long enough and can handle the current. I have my toaster oven on a heavy duty, 2 foot extension cord because the nearest outlet is just barely too far away. If the cord came out the other end of the toaster oven, I wouldn't need the extension.
Which is why my toaster is now under a cupboard, making an entirely new fire hazard.
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