“never plug extension cords into extension cords” is probably the most common piece of electrical related advice I’ve ever heard. But if you have, say, 2 x 2m long extension cords, and you plug one into the other, why is that considered a lot more unsafe than just using a single 4 or 5 meter cord?
Does it just boil down to that extra connection creating another opportunity for the prongs to slip out and cause a spark or short circuit? Or is there something else happening there?
For that matter - why aren’t super long extension cords (50 or more meters) considered unsafe? Does that also just come down to a matter of only having 2 connections versus 4 or more on a daisy chained cord?
Followup stupid question: is whatever causes piggybacked extension cords to be considered unsafe actually that dangerous, or is it the sort of thing that gets parroted around and misconstrued/blown out of proportion? On a scale from “smoking 20 packs of cigarettes a day” to “stubbing your toe on a really heavy piece of furniture”, how dangerous would you subjectively rate daisy chaining extension cords, assuming it was only 1 hop (2 extension cords, no more), and was kept under 5 or 10 metres?
I’m sure there’s probably somebody bashing their head against a wall at these questions, but I’m not trying to be ignorant, I’m just curious. Thank you for tolerating my stupid questions
50 years old? Most of the landlords I’ve dealt with in my life consider 100 year old outlets to be perfectly sufficient, along with their carrying capacity and number in each room.
“ it was enough to power a lightbulb in 1925, so it should be perfectly sufficient for your needs with all of your TVs and computers and such.”
With one landlord, I actually had to call the city inspector into the building in order to verify that the power supply for each apartment fell beneath city requirements (it’s more complicated than this, but this is a simple explanation for casual readers). He spent the next three years doing everything in his power to get me out.
But the building got rewired pretty quickly after my report to the city. I even got compensation to stay in the hotel for a couple of days while they worked on my apartment.