Homemade Extension Cords

[FischLights]

I found on a website to make homemade extension cords out of 18/9 wire. 18 gauge wire and 9 wires in the cord. Basically it said to use the white Neutral for all cords by slicing into them, and taking out other colors down the cord where you need to put a female end. At the other end he would use the one white wire in the LOR box and take the differnt colors on hook them to the different channels in the box.

So I guess he wouldn't need the AC output receptacles the box comes with.

here is his website http://www.lakeforestchristmas.com



Has anyone done this or recommend it.

I figure it would save me about 200 ft of extension cords. I was thinking of doing it for my mini trees, which are LED, so there wouldn't be to much power draw.

[Dave Batzdorf]

The neutral line carries the return current back to the source. In most instances its not a good idea. However if you are only ever going to use LEDs it might not be as bad. But as a rule of thumb and mho, I wouldn't do it.

[Dan C]

I read somewhere that when doing this, when using led's they require so little power that it actually back feeds to some of the channels next to it, but only at a small percentage.
The effect was not as bad with incandescent lights because they draw more power.

can't seem to find a the post though...

[ErnieHorning]

Dan C wrote:

I read somewhere that when doing this, when using led's they require so little power that it actually back feeds to some of the channels next to it...

You can get some voltage from a fully ON channel to couple to the other wires because they're tightly bundled together. This is the same problem as when you run the communication cable next to a power cord. The LED's could turn on dimly because of their low current requirement. You could use the snubber resister method to fix the problem if it exists.

[Dan C]

ErnieHorning wrote:

Dan C wrote:

I read somewhere that when doing this, when using led's they require so little power that it actually back feeds to some of the channels next to it...

You can get some voltage from a fully ON channel to couple to the other wires because they're tightly bundled together.  This is the same problem as when you run the communication cable next to a power cord.  The LED's could turn on dimly because of their low current requirement.  You could use the snubber resister method to fix the problem if it exists.

I believe what you are referring to is an Induced current.

[Donald Puryear]

FischLights wrote:

I found on a website to make homemade extension cords out of 18/9 wire. 18 gauge wire and 9 wires in the cord. Basically it said to use the white Neutral for all cords by slicing into them, and taking out other colors down the cord where you need to put a female end. At the other end he would use the one white wire in the LOR box and take the differnt colors on hook them to the different channels in the box.

If you try this make sure the wire is rated for 300 volts. Most sprinkler cable is not.

Watch your total current, cause the white wire will be carrying the load of all the other wires.

[FischLights]

I was thinking of only running like 70 to 100 LED lights per wire, which would be like 5 watts X 8 mini trees and on my candy canes which would be 20 watts X 6 candy canes.



what do you think?

[Steven]

I did something like this for my mega arch, although I built the multi-conductor cable myself using 4 lengths of SPT2 and a spare wire from a discarded string. One reason I used separate SPT2 cables is that the arch is longer than the distance to the controller, so I cut the individual cables to the right lengths.

I terminated the 9 wires to a Molex connector, and I have a female Molex connector on the controller case.