this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Absolutely normal here. Three phases, now 400 instead of 380V back then, 64A. Standard house connection.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 17 points 23 hours ago

"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.

[–] h3mlocke@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago

I sell so many of these around Xmas time, I just make them myself with scissors and electric tape.

[–] RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Take it down, darwin demands sacrifice, lest we be riddled with stupidity.

[–] FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago

He didn't take it to the store and tape it to the shelf so it could NOT be there

[–] Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world 9 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 11 points 21 hours ago

Imagine I'm making the most exasperated, annoyed, disapponted noise possible.

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[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What if I yell "no homo!" when I plug it in?

[–] guyoverthere123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

where are you plugging it in?

[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, there's only one place for double-headed items to be safely used and it isn't in the workshop.

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

...the kitchen?

[–] ximtor@lemm.ee 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you lose power, you can use one of these cables to power your house (or at least, the part of your house on that phase).

This is not how you should do this, but it can work. It is not a good idea (possibly illegal?).

[–] kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 1 day ago (4 children)

In my jurisdiction, backfeeding your house from a receptacle is very illegal. Transfer switches and interlock kits exist for a reason.

For anyone wondering exactly why it's a bad idea: Power from your generator can, if your house isn't isolated from the grid, travel back into the utility lines and backward through the big transformer at the utility pole (so now it's a few thousand volts again) and give an unsuspecting linesman a nasty surprise. People have died from this. It is a bad idea.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

This is also why solar inverters in most countries MUST be able to 'island' (logically disconnect from grid) in order to run a battery.

We don't have a battery yet, so our inverter shuts down on grid loss. Frustrating as hell when there's an outage on a sunny day, but i get it.

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[–] rektstarsceosu@lemmy.zip 153 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why not have the meters detect and control a disconnect. with all the solar generation around, someone's gotta have a bad transfer switch somewhere.

[–] Ydna@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Arc-fault breakers are required by code as of now, and it would help this situation quote a bit. However millions of homes don't have them installed so they're more at risk.

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reaction time

In the US, using a cord like this will either be harmless or create effectively a dead short. Typical breakers will catch the latter but it will take tenths of a second for a breaker to react in which time the electricity could kill someone.

Depending on circuit conditions a GFCI might intervene as well, they're typically faster at reacting (needing a few milliseconds) but for a cable designed to handle full residential power, it's still enough to kill a person in that small window of time

[–] isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 14 hours ago

except american standards mandate GFCI only in bathrooms, so you'll get cooked before anything trips

[–] n3cr0@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago

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. 🤦‍♂️

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 83 points 1 day ago (16 children)

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.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

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

[–] zippythezigzag@lemm.ee 2 points 4 hours ago

Unionized Kobold electricians. Hmm.

[–] kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The problem is that people read a few things on the internet, think they're now suddenly domain experts, and do it anyway.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh I know.

I've talked to them.

Don't do it. If you haven't actually worked with an electrician for at least two or.three years, just leave the repairs and shit jobs for people like me.

If you can't explain why the white wire is incorrectly called a neutral in single-phase systems, don't touch it.

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 47 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It also backfeeds the grid and can kill someone working on the lines.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)
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[–] ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Sorry, what is "this time of the year"? Suicide September?

[–] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 46 points 1 day ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] Freshparsnip@lemm.ee 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It is written in the book of Leviticus: "It shall be unclean for one end of an electric cord to match the other"

[–] Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's OK - I'm only going to use the suicide cord for my fractal wood-burning project.

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[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 1 day ago (9 children)

What would they even be used for except to short a circuit?

[–] CoopaLoopa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago

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.

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."

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