On 15/03/2012 18:07, ARWadsworth wrote:
John Rumm wrote:
On 15/03/2012 15:36, Martin Brown wrote:
On 15/03/2012 15:27, Hugh - Was Invisible wrote:
On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:42:47 -0000, Fred
wrote:

Or in the case of our local church fete a pair of 3kW kettles on a
mostly rolled up mad hot extension lead plugged into the wall. They
did it last year as well completely melting the inside of the reel.
*SCARY* I am inclined to the view now that they should include a thermal
cutout! The clear warning on the reel has little or no effect on
most folk

The modern 50m JoJo ones do include the cutout these days...
presumable for this sort of reason.

Had a look, but would want a 10m one or maybe 20m and they don't seem to
have thermal protect at least according to the summary at Farnell.

The extension lead Geoff gave me has a thermal cut out and it has operated
twice.

Once when a pillock plugged in a 2kW heater without unwinding it (he was
told not to) and then again when another pillock decided to charge up two
cherry pickers without unwinding it (without asking to use it).

I was suprised at how long it took to reset the trip/cool down even after I
had unwound the lead.

Still preferable to ending up with a molten mess of plastic and cable
all gummed up together. I was amazed the previous one didn't catch fire!

I also reckon they should be aggressively limited to no more than 20A
for 10s to avoid other obvious stupidity like 2 kettles which is an
overload condition on a 13A socket even with the cable unwound.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown