- 2 days ago
There’s one extension cord mistake that can quietly overheat your home, and Elias Yoder explains exactly why it happens. Using a story about a pony and a loaded wagon, he shows how a cord can “work” for years while still being too small for the job, heating up along its entire length until it becomes a fire risk.
This practical home safety talk covers extension cord safety, electrical load, wire gauge, motor startup surge, and the difference between heat-producing appliances and low-watt devices. He walks through what should never go on an extension cord, why long cords need thicker wire, how old house wiring can make things worse, and why rugs, tight coils, damaged plugs, and outdoor misuse create hidden danger.
If you want a clear electrical safety guide for the home, rental property, garage, workshop, or winter heating season, this narration gives simple rules you can use right away. It is especially useful for anyone searching for extension cord tips, fire prevention advice, appliance wattage basics, and practical home maintenance guidance.
Created for viewers looking for extension cord safety, electrical fire prevention, home repair advice, and practical DIY education. Ideal for anyone searching for wire gauge explained, motor load basics, heater safety, garage freezer setup, and everyday home electrical safety tips.
This practical home safety talk covers extension cord safety, electrical load, wire gauge, motor startup surge, and the difference between heat-producing appliances and low-watt devices. He walks through what should never go on an extension cord, why long cords need thicker wire, how old house wiring can make things worse, and why rugs, tight coils, damaged plugs, and outdoor misuse create hidden danger.
If you want a clear electrical safety guide for the home, rental property, garage, workshop, or winter heating season, this narration gives simple rules you can use right away. It is especially useful for anyone searching for extension cord tips, fire prevention advice, appliance wattage basics, and practical home maintenance guidance.
Created for viewers looking for extension cord safety, electrical fire prevention, home repair advice, and practical DIY education. Ideal for anyone searching for wire gauge explained, motor load basics, heater safety, garage freezer setup, and everyday home electrical safety tips.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is an extension cord in your house running a thing it has no business running.
00:05It is behind the sofa, or it is running along the skirting to the corner where the heater sits,
00:11or it is snaked out to the garage where the freezer is,
00:15and it has been there a year, maybe five, and nothing has ever gone wrong with it,
00:20so you have stopped seeing it.
00:23That cord is doing its job.
00:25It will keep doing its job, and that is exactly the trouble,
00:29because a cord that is too small for what you have plugged into it does not stop working,
00:35and it does not blow a fuse, and it does not warn you.
00:39It just gets warm along its whole length every hour that thing is running, for years.
00:46And then one night it does not get warm.
00:49It gets hot.
00:51Cords started more fires in this country last winter than most people would believe,
00:56and almost every one of them was doing precisely what it had always done right up until it was not.
01:04I am Elias Yoder.
01:06I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
01:09My house is not on the wire and never has been,
01:13and I will say plainly that I do not run a household off a grid the way you do.
01:19But I have panels on the shop roof and batteries under the bench,
01:24and I have cords running off that system to a pump and a light and a charger,
01:29and the trouble I am going to describe is the same trouble at 12 volts as at 120.
01:36It is a question of how much you ask a thing to carry.
01:41I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
01:46The book is the long version.
01:48If you want it, it is there.
01:50I will not mention it again.
01:52My grandfather taught me this with a pony and a loaded wagon,
01:57and I earned the lesson properly.
01:59We had a big Belgian mare, and we had a little driving pony,
02:03and one morning there was a wagon out in the yard loaded with feed sacks that wanted taking up to
02:10the far barn.
02:11I was in a hurry, and the pony was the one standing in the aisle already harnessed,
02:16and the mare was out in the field and would have wanted fetching and hitching.
02:21So I hitched the pony, and she pulled it.
02:25That is the part I want you to hold on to.
02:28She leaned into it, and the wagon moved, and off we went up the lane,
02:33and I thought, well, there we are, and I was pleased with myself for saving twenty minutes.
02:40My grandfather came out of the shop and watched us go about twenty yards.
02:45He did not shout.
02:47He walked up and took the lines out of my hands and stopped her.
02:52Then he took my hand and put it flat on her shoulder and held it there.
02:58She was wet through.
02:59Twenty yards, and she was hot under my hand and blowing hard,
03:05and there was a trembling in her I could feel through my palm.
03:10He let me hold my hand there a good while,
03:13long enough that I understood it without being told.
03:17Then he said the thing.
03:19He said,
03:20She will pull it.
03:22She will pull it right up until she cannot.
03:26It is not whether it will pull.
03:28It is what it costs to pull it.
03:31And I want to be clear about what he was not saying.
03:35He was not saying the pony was no good.
03:38She was a fine little mare,
03:40and she did her own work beautifully all her life.
03:43He was saying she had been asked for something that was not hers to give,
03:49by somebody who was in a hurry and did not want to walk out to the field.
03:54That is every cord in this video.
03:58Now let me tell you what a cord actually is,
04:01because once you see it, you will never plug in carelessly again.
04:06A cord is a pipe.
04:09I have talked before about running water through a long, thin pipe,
04:13and how much push you lose along the way.
04:17Electricity is the same.
04:19The copper inside that cord has a certain size,
04:23and the electricity has to squeeze through it.
04:26And a thin wire over a long distance is a narrow pipe over a long distance.
04:32Now here is the difference between this and a loose connection, and it matters.
04:38A loose joint makes heat in one small place, in a wall, behind a plate.
04:45A cord that is too thin makes heat along its entire length.
04:50Every foot of it, all at once, all the time it is working.
04:55The whole cord is warm, which is why people do not notice,
04:59because there is no one hot spot to find.
05:02It just feels like nothing much, for years,
05:05and it is quietly cooking its own insulation.
05:08So the question is never whether the cord will run the thing.
05:12It nearly always will.
05:14The question is what it costs the cord.
05:18Now, the rule that sorts everything,
05:20and if you take one thing away, take this.
05:23Ask yourself what the appliance actually does.
05:27Does it make heat, or does it turn a motor, or does it do neither?
05:32Things that make heat should never go on an extension cord.
05:36Not a thin one, not a thick one, not a power strip.
05:39A space heater, an electric kettle, a toaster, an iron, a hairdryer, a toaster oven, or an air fryer,
05:49an electric skillet, a microwave, a window air conditioner, which is both.
05:54These draw an enormous amount, and they draw it continuously,
05:59and they are the single commonest cause of the trouble I am describing.
06:03A space heater on an extension cord is the classic,
06:07and it is a classic because people do it every winter in every state.
06:12Those go straight into a wall outlet, their own outlet, nothing else sharing it.
06:19Things that turn a motor can go on a cord, but only a proper heavy one,
06:24and not a thin one on any account.
06:27A freezer, a refrigerator, a dehumidifier, a sump pump, a compressor, a saw, a pressure washer.
06:36And there is a thing about motors that nobody tells you.
06:40A motor pulls a great surge when it starts,
06:43several times what it draws while it is running.
06:46A freezer in a garage is not humming along steadily all day.
06:51It is starting and stopping, and every single start is a hard pull on that cord.
06:58That is why a thin cord out to a garage freezer is worse than it looks,
07:03even though the freezer's own label makes it seem a modest thing.
07:07And everything else, which is nearly all of what is plugged in around a house, is perfectly fine.
07:14Lamps, a radio, a clock, a telephone charger, a television, a computer.
07:21These draw very little, and a cord will handle them all day long.
07:26So, heat, no.
07:28Motor, heavy cord, only.
07:31Everything else, carry on.
07:34And you can check any of it for yourself, rather than taking my word.
07:38Nearly every appliance has a plate or a label on the back or the underside, giving watts or amps.
07:46Anything above about 1500 watts is a heat maker and belongs in a wall.
07:52Anything down in the tens of watts is nothing at all to a cord.
07:57Most of what confuses people sits in the middle, and the middle is where the motors live.
08:03Now, the size of the cord, because this is where people buy wrong, and it costs them nothing to buy
08:09right.
08:10The thickness of the copper is given as a gauge number, and the number runs backwards, which catches everybody.
08:18A smaller number means thicker wire.
08:21Sixteen is thin and light.
08:24Fourteen is better.
08:26Twelve is heavy.
08:27And the second half of it is the one people miss entirely.
08:32The longer the cord, the thicker it has to be for the same job.
08:36A hundred-foot cord of a given thickness carries a great deal less than a twenty-five-foot cord of
08:43the same thickness,
08:44because there is four times as much pipe to squeeze through.
08:48So, a light cord that was perfectly adequate, reeled out ten feet across a room, is a poor thing at
08:56a hundred feet down the garden.
08:58Buy heavier than you think you need.
09:00It costs a few dollars more once.
09:04And if you are running anything with a motor on it, buy twelve-gauge and be done arguing with yourself.
09:11You do not have to guess at any of this either.
09:13It is printed on the jacket of the cord itself, every few feet, in small, raised letters.
09:21The gauge, the number of conductors, and what it is rated for.
09:25Go and look at one.
09:27Most people have never read a word on a cord in their lives.
09:32One more on the thickness, because there is a thing in an old house that makes all of this worse,
09:38and people do not connect it.
09:40A cord is only half the pipe.
09:42The other half is the wiring already in your walls, and in a house wired fifty or sixty years ago,
09:50that wiring was put in for a few lamps and a radio.
09:53So, a long, thin cord on an old circuit is a narrow pipe joined to another narrow pipe, and the
10:00whole run is only as good as the thinnest part of it.
10:04If your house is old, and your breaker trips now and again in winter, that is not the breaker being
10:10fussy, that is the breaker doing its work.
10:15Now the list of things not to do, and every one of these is common.
10:20Never under a rug or a carpet.
10:23This is the one I would put first.
10:26A cord makes heat, as we have said, and it gets rid of that heat into the air around it,
10:31and a rug takes that away.
10:33Worse, you walk on it, and the copper inside works and flexes and breaks strand by strand under the wool
10:42where you cannot see it, and a cord with half its strands broken is suddenly a much thinner cord carrying
10:49the same load.
10:50You will never see it happen.
10:54Never coiled up while it is working.
10:56A reel with fifty feet still wound on it, running a heater, is a coil of wire heating itself with
11:03nowhere for that heat to go.
11:06Unwind the whole cord every time, even if you only need six feet of it.
11:12Never through a doorway that shuts on it, or a window, or under a door.
11:17The pinching does the same job as the walking.
11:22Never nailed or stapled up.
11:24A staple through the jacket is a staple through the insulation, sooner or later.
11:30Never a cord plugged into a cord plugged into a strip.
11:35Every joint is a weak point, and the whole run is only as good as the thinnest part of it.
11:42Never an indoor cord outdoors.
11:45The jacket on an outdoor cord is made for sun and wet and cold, and the indoor one is not,
11:52and it cracks.
11:54And never cut the third pin off to make a plug fit.
11:58That pin is the one that carries a fault to the ground instead of through you.
12:04And one more that is not on any list and causes a good deal of grief.
12:08Do not run a cord to a thing that must not stop.
12:13A freezer full of a winter of meat, a sump pump, a medical device, an aquarium heater.
12:19Not because the cord will fail, but because a cord can be kicked out, tripped over, unplugged by a child,
12:26or knocked loose by a door, and you will not find out for two days.
12:31Those want a proper socket where the plug is in tight and nothing passes by it.
12:38Now, the thing underneath all of these.
12:40An extension cord is a tool, not a fixture.
12:44It is for a job you are doing today.
12:47A saw in the yard, a lamp while you paint, a pump while you empty something.
12:52If a cord has been in the same place for six months, that is not a cord anymore.
12:56That is your house telling you there is no outlet where you need one, and the answer to that is
13:02an outlet, fitted by somebody who does that work.
13:05It costs money once, and it is the end of the matter.
13:09Here is the test, and it takes four seconds, and it is the same test I gave you for a
13:15loose connection.
13:16Run the thing for 20 minutes.
13:18Then take the flat of your hand and run it along the whole cord.
13:23Then hold it on the plug.
13:24Then on the outlet the cord is in.
13:27All of it should be the same temperature as the room.
13:30If the cord is warm along its length, it is too small for what you have asked it to do.
13:36If the plug or the outlet is warm, there is a poor connection there.
13:40Either way, you have found something, and you found it with your hand.
13:44Cool is right.
13:46Warm is a warning.
13:48That has not changed, and it will not.
13:51And one about where cords live when they are not working, since a great deal of damage happens then rather
13:57than in use.
13:58Do not hang a cord by looping it tight round a nail, and do not wrap it round your elbow
14:04and your hand and yank it tight.
14:06Both of those break strands at the same spots over and over.
14:11Coil it loosely in big loops, the way you would a rope, and hang the coil on a peg or
14:17a length of dowel.
14:18A cord treated that way lasts 20 years, and one treated the other way is finished in three, and it
14:24will be failing on the inside long before you can see anything on the outside.
14:29One more indoors that is worth a word, because it is the season for it.
14:34If you put lights on a tree or round a window at Christmas, read what the box says about how
14:39many strings may be joined end to end, because there is a number and it is usually smaller than people
14:46assume.
14:47And take them off the same circuit as anything that makes heat.
14:51Now outdoors, briefly, because the rules are stricter.
14:55Use a cord marked for outdoor use.
14:58Keep every joint between two cords up off wet ground on a block or a bucket or hung on a
15:04nail.
15:05Never run one through standing water.
15:08And outdoors, you want the protection of a socket that trips, the kind with the little test and reset buttons,
15:15because wet ground and electricity together is how people are killed rather than merely inconvenienced.
15:22And in the plain limits, four things.
15:25A damaged cord is not repairable with tape.
15:29A nick in the jacket, a cut, a flattened place, a plug that has gone loose or discovered.
15:35Tape holds the weather off for a day, and it holds nothing off for a year.
15:41Cut the plug off so nobody can use it and throw it away.
15:45A power strip is not more outlets.
15:48It is one outlet shared several ways, and the total is still the total.
15:53Six things plugged into a strip in one socket is six things in one socket.
16:00A cheap cord with a molded plug that has gone soft, loose, or brown at the pins is finished, and
16:07the browning is heat that has already happened.
16:09That is not a cosmetic matter, and there is nothing to be gained by giving it another winter.
16:16And a surge protector and an extension cord are two different articles doing two different jobs.
16:22One is about a spike coming in.
16:25Neither of them makes a circuit bigger.
16:28There is no scheme in any of this, and nobody arranged anything.
16:33The money simply runs the other way.
16:36A thin cord costs $6, and a proper one costs $18, and a shop full of people buying the cheap
16:44one is a shop doing well, and the people selling them are not hiding a thing from you, because everything
16:50I have just told you is printed on the packaging of the cord itself.
16:55It is only that nobody makes a living telling you to put your hand on a cord after twenty minutes,
17:01so nobody says it, and a thing nobody has a reason to say gets forgotten inside of one generation.
17:08And a plain word for anybody renting, because I know a good many of you are, and the advice to
17:14fit an outlet is not always yours to take.
17:18If you cannot have the work done, then the rule matters more to you rather than less.
17:23Nothing that makes heat on a cord, ever.
17:28Heavy cord for anything with a motor.
17:31Nothing under a rug.
17:33And put it in writing to whoever holds the place that the room has not enough sockets, because that is
17:40their business and it is worth having on paper.
17:43So here is what I would have you do tonight, and it costs nothing whatever.
17:48Walk your house and find every extension cord in it.
17:52Then ask two things of each one.
17:55What is on the end of it, and how long has it been there?
17:59Anything that makes heat comes off tonight and goes in a wall socket.
18:04Anything that has been in place more than six months is a note to yourself about where you need an
18:10outlet.
18:11While you are at it, count how many sockets each cord is feeding at the far end, because a cord
18:18running a strip running four things is one socket doing the work of four, and you should know that about
18:25your own house.
18:26And lift the rugs.
18:28Every one.
18:29I would wager a good number of you find something under there you had entirely forgotten about.
18:36So tell me in the comments how many cords you counted, and whether anything that makes heat was on one
18:42of them.
18:43Be truthful, because half of us have done it.
18:46And if you have told me your county before, tell me this instead.
18:50Do you own the place, or rent it?
18:54Because that changes what you can do about an outlet, and it changes who you ought to be talking to.
19:00Next time I want to go after the reason you needed that heater in the first place, because cold air
19:06is getting into your rooms from somewhere, and you cannot feel most of it with your hand.
19:12A lit candle carried slowly round the edges of a room will show you every bit of it in about
19:17twenty minutes, and you will be able to see it moving.
19:21It is not whether it will pull. It is what it costs to pull it.
19:26The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
19:33Hello, Wasteland
19:33We are now proporciones