I found a 150' spool of 12/4 that has a flexible black jacket on it, marked water resistant; for $50. I want to make an extension cord on it, to run maybe 8a. I suppose I could connect two of the wires to further reduce the voltage drop, since I don't need 4 wires.
Is this cable likely to be capable of being left outside for an extended period of time? Would it be UV resistant, even though is isn't marked that? I have a boat dock at the bottom of a 100' cliff. It is a real real pain to have to carry my generator down 125 stairs when need power down there for a few hours. (it is even more of a pain to carry it back up) It would be great to be able to leave the generator at the top. I have hooked up two 50'
12/3 extension cords, but they don't quite reach.I can't see any particular danger to it. If the cable somehow failed, the worst that could happen is that it trips the GFCI; though I have heard that ungrounded generators can't electrocute, because they have no connection to ground. I suppose contacting the hot and neutral with opposite hands would be an exception to that; but that could happen just because a cable failed. I just don't want to spend $50 on something that will fail quickly.
Now that I think about it, the generator ground isn't connected to anything (the neutral and ground aren't bonded) so the ground wire serves no purpose. I could connect two pairs of wires to reduce the voltage drop to almost nothing. Does that make sense.