Submitted 14 hours ago by AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807608349215.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt
Don’t. Even if you understand what you’re doing, someone else won’t and your family will die in a house fire.
Male-to-male end cables allow for the two leads of an open male end to make contact with anything conductive (including your flesh, causing some pretty gnarly burns) to complete the circuit and start a fire. No conscionable electrician will make these for you. It is the dumbest solution to any problem you’re looking to solve. Don’t.
Just a reminder coming up on Christmas.
This is also illegal most everywhere.
What even is the potential point for this? Is it just a suicide cable?
I’ve heard it called a “suicide plug”. A common use for them is back feeding power from a generator into your homes electrical panel during extended power outages.
It can technically work but comes with major safety risks such as:
The proper way to do it would be to have a transfer switch and generator plug installed. The transfer switch guarantees that when you’re running on gen power, you’re not back feeding through the transformer out to the power line.
Christmas lights come in strings with a male plug on one end and female on the other, sometimes in the course of hanging them up people create a situation where they think they want to connect the two female ends together, thus they think this is the solution.
The hardware store here has a big sign up about this every winter, explaining why, if you think need this you are wrong, if you ask for one we will not give you one, if you make one yourself you will probably die.
Nominally you can use it to plug a generators output into a household circuit, which will provide power to that circuit in cases of a blackout, saving you from needing to unplug everything critical and daisy chain 10 multiplugs to the generator.
It could also be used to connect two seperate household circuits together, if only of them is actually live for whatever reason.
In reality you shouldn’t his at all, ever. Just daisy chain the extension cords. If you forgot to isolate the circuit by flipping the main breaker (easy to do if there’s no power anyway, because of a blackout), and then the grid comes back on, your generator is gonna have a real bad time. And then there’s obviosuly the electric shock risk of using something like this.
We used one to run power to a garage a couple times per year. It’s relatively safe if you use it right and never have power running through the cord until it’s fully plugged in.
Safe, until someone (accidentally) detaches the wrong end.
I hesitate to explain.
If the electric power company has cut your power, e.g. because you didn’t pay, you still can get power from your kind neighbour.
I had to check if this really is what OP describes. Yes, it is:
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Argh! Order a deathtrap from AliExpress!
(OK, to be fair, I got an electric shock from one of these once - hand made by my landlord - and I’m still alive)
What is the use case for this
Non UK plugs in general give me the fear.
Hey the other european ones are also fine
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
YSK it’s probably not a good idea to post a link where people could buy the thing you tell them not to use
AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Sorry. I ran into that and it was the inspiration for the post in the first place. At least both sides have a ground, I guess?
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
That’s natural selection.