drop cord size

[Ralph Mowery]

I am looking at some reels to hold some drop cords. At lowes they specify a reel that has something new to me.

They list the reel holding 150 feet of 5.33 or 125 feet of 4.67 SJT wire.

I know what SJT is , but do not know what the 5.33 and 4.67 refer to.

What would that relate to in the outside of the cord or the wire size ?

If diameter in milimeters or some other demension looks like the numbers are backward.

It also lists 150 feet of 5 . Just what does that 5 stand for ?

I need to hold 100 feet of # 12/3 drop cord.

Been thinking of just getting one of the water hose reels as I know that will hold the wire. I have one with 100 feet of water hose on that is much larger in diameter than the drop cord.

[hubops]

I checked the Lowes Canadian web site :

They had the brains to say 16/3 and 14/3 .. instead of "doing the math " :-)

pg. 28 of 120 has some physical dimensions :

John T.

[Ralph Mowery]

Ok that makes sense now. Some computer decided to devide the wire gauge by the number of conductors instead of listing it as wire size and conductors. Really not useful information for anything.

I may or may not be able to get my 100 feet of 4.00 ( 12/3) wire on that reel. I do have some either 14 or 18 gauge cords that I can put on it if the

12 will not fit.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Those numbers , 5.33 and 4.67, are typos. Someone entered them as a numerics, not text. And did not proof read their work.

16 divided by 3 = 5.33, 14 divided by 3 = 4.67

This type of error seems to occur a lot in Lowes, Home Depot, and others item listings.

[Jim Joyce]

I can't answer your question but a few months ago I dropped two of those things off at the local Habitat ReStore. For me, they sucked. There needs to be a way to use the cord without completely unrolling and removing all of it. Actually, it wouldn't have been that hard to modify them, but I was short tempered that day and just wanted to get rid of them.

[Ralph Mowery]

The way to use them at shorter lengths is to put the middle of the cord under the hook and wind the cord up on parallel lengths. That way you have both ends on the outside when you finish. You can then pull out what you need. It is not good to draw heavy current with the wire wrapped on the reel as it can over heat. Wire depends on being in open air for full or near full current capacity.

[trader_4]

Wow, I'm impressed that you figured that out from what was posted. My kudos!

[Clare Snyder]

A plastic reel isn't as bad as a steel one - where the steel acts as the core of the inductor - - -

[micky]

That's hilarious.

[bud--]

The magnetic field of the hot and neutral cancel each other. Otherwise steel conduit wouldn't be usefull.

I agree with Ralph, high current with wire wrapped can overheat the cord.

[gfretwell]

There is still capacitive coupling to steel raceway systems. That is why GFCI manufacturers set limits to the length of conduit runs.

[Clare Snyder]

You are correct with a pure resistive load but with a capacitive or inductive load (high power factor) if I remeber correctly there is a reluctance issue

[Ralph Mowery]

I doubt that the metal would be much of a factor if any. I worked in a plant that had miles and miles of wiring in conduit. Much of it powering large motors.

Some installer did make a major mistake on one wiring job. On a 3 phase circuit he ran two wires in one piece of conduit that was about 5 feet long and the third wire in another piece. Did not take long for those wires to over heat and melt out some plastic terminal strips.

[gfretwell]

The interaction seems to show up as capacitive coupling on the grounding conductor be it a metal raceway system or in a grounding wire. It is not important until you install GFCI protection.

*********

"The circuit is too long for the equipment being protected by the GFCI.

This is common in GFCI circuit breakers with circuit lengths over

150?. Capacitive leakages due to the wire length of the circuitry may exceed the threshold of the GFCI. (The actual length limitations vary depending on wire type and size.) To prevent this issue, place the GFCI device close to the equipment it will be protecting ? this may mean using a GFCI receptacle or blank face GFCI device near a normal receptacle."

[TimR]

I grabbed a hose reel from my neighbor's trash and used it for the outdoor extension cord for a couple of years.

I put the center of the cord on the reel and carefully wound it up nice and neat, doubled so I could reach both male and female ends. Then I could unwind just as much as I needed to weedeat, edge, blow leaves, etc.

It was a pain in the butt and I ended up realizing I was spending twice the time it took to just coil it, and the bulky hose reel was hard to store and hard to drag around. I put it back in my neighbor's trash and went back to careful coiling (using the alternate palm up palm down to eliminate twist.) I'm much happier now.

[Jim Joyce]

+1 Almost identical experience here, except I bought my reels and then donated them.

[Ralph Mowery]

For the short ones I am sure you are correct.

I have a couple that are either 16 or 14 gauge and by the time I get about 75 feet wound up my hands are not large enough to hold the wire very well. I probably only use them about 3 or 4 times a year so no problem with them as of now. I use some 25 feet ones often,but no problem to store by hand.

I bought a 12 gauge dropcord and thought I may not be able to hold it to do a good job by hand. I am having a garage/ storage shed built just under 100 feet from an outside outlet of the house. I did not want to go to the expense of running a permient wire under ground to it as I will not use it very much where I would need any power.

The main cars we drive are in an attached garage, so no more than I drive the truck that will be put in the new garage I don't think it will be much of a problem to raise the door by hand. If it gets to it, thinking of a battery, inverter, and solar recharger.

[bud--]

So I guess in Canada you can use ferrous conduit for resistive loads but not motors, transformers or pf correction capacitors. (This is not GFCI related.) Perhaps you could explain? Canadian physics? Coriolis effect when you are unlivably far north?

============================ A place where inductance is a problem - US-NEC. The conductor (GEC)connecting a service ground/neutral system to grounding electrode(s) may be protected by running through a ferrous conduit. This is a single conductor and results in unacceptable inductance and resulting voltage drop. (A earthed surge resulting from lightning has high frequency components, which are much more problematic.) The conductor is required to be bonded to the conduit at each end so the conduit is a parallel conductor, and the conduit carries a significant part of the current to earth.

[Clare Snyder]

There is a big difference between one pair carrying 30 amps and 75 turns of that pair wrapped around a soft iron core carrying 30 amps too.

[Clare Snyder]

I was thinking the leading or lagging power factor would/could cause a current phase shift between the line and neutral conductor, or between the 2 lines and neutral of a 240 volt CT supply. IF there is a phase shift the magnetic feild would be asymetrical and the asymetry would cause an unballanced inductive effect - with the unbalance causing an "inductive load" (field) that would be concentrated by the core. My AC electric theory education goes back

50 years - so I could have made a faulty assumption somewhere down the line - - - -