How much current safe for 30m extension?

Yes I want power in my garage but only on a temporary basis such as those occassions when I ned to charge my car battery or use power tools, etc as I described.

You talk a lot of sense but my neighbours do not. They are not DIY or car enthusiasts and have no ineterst in laying on power to the garage block. :-(

I was thinking of this arrangement purely on a temporary basis. So far I have laid the wire on the ground but as it can get damp and/or dirty then I figured it might be better to suspend it in the air.

Furthermore other might trip on it (even though it is a red colour) and it seesm better not to inconvenience them.

This is unlikely to be an issue as we have a 999 year lease and the freeholder is an overseas trust fund. This means that we maintain the flats through our own management company and it holds a lease for the common parts.

No need as I will be using the two extensions in much the same way as someone might use them for powering a mains hedge trimmer.

Heh! :-)

I must admit to doing much the same when I was living in a London flat - for very similar sorts of reasons and only to rig up and put away each time I used it. It obviously depends on your physical arrangements as to whether it is totally reckless or not quite totally so.

What I did, however, was to take some polypropylene cord and tied figure of eight knots on the bight every foot or so, with the loop big enough to pass the plug through. You have guessed the rest - one end of the cord was tied to the window frame and the other to the garage and the power cable just ran down through the loops. That way, the weight of the cable was taken by loops in the tensioned cord - particularly important at the ends, where otherwise the cable would have had to be tied around something. Where I had to do a change in direction to avoid the cable rubbing against anything, I just took a piece of cord from the main cord and tied it off, to a tree branch, IIRC - and then tensioned the cords to get the run I wanted..

I don't know your layout and can only advise that doing things like this is inherently high risk - but, if you are going to do it anyway, this might help reduce that risk a little. If it goes wrong, as you have been clearly told - you will be wishing that you just bought an inverter or a small genny (IIRC, B&Q do a perfectly good one for under

100GBP) - I have one and it has paid for itself time and time again. They weren't available at anything like that price when I played silly games with cables.

If you do think about leaving the cord(s) (but not the cable) in place - with a pull through extra cord so that you can pull the cable down as and when you need it, be aware that man-made cords can be very affected by sunlight, by relatively modest sudden shock loads, by abrasion, by pressure at points of sharp change in direction, by the knots and by a whole lot more. So you need to select the cord carefully with a very high factor of safety and inspect it often. Also note that birds will sit on it and do what birds do to whatever is underneath - so routing it over a neighbour's patio is not a good idea - unless you live in London*.

SHEESH ! all that fuss over this ?

I dug out a small 12-18 inch trench for a landlady upstate and eliminated a Fine Mess of Cords just like the ones portrayed here, over

10ft high the finshed grade It had a Guy Wire and was Semi-Permanent she just got tired of the eyesore it was.

Any how; I used some liguid tight rigid conduit with three no. 10 awg to a New doube GFCI Breaker straight into the Garage Siding and even laid out some swithced Lighting and convenience Outlets for her....

If you're going to live there for 999 years, I Mean };-)

Why can't you do the same there ?

Send a Bill to the Holding Company, they just might pay for it after the fact, or a court would probably award the deduction from the rent :-o given the necesary & permanent nature of the upgrade to the garage.

No Breaker Panel ???., Sheesh ! Move outa there };-)

If a wood chuck, could chuck wood ?

Lots of reasons, I'm sorry to say.

1) This would count as domestic wiring and come under Part P. Which means a qualified /company/ would have to do the work or it would have to be inspected by the local authority building inspectorate, as it is exterior to the flat. Either of which would really cost.

2) Flats in the UK tend to be built of either a lot of brick or concrete and getting a cable to (under) ground in the right place, from an upper flat, would be both very difficult and expensive. Plus there could be big issues about things like breaching fire barriers. Not to mention getting all the way leaves. Also, many people are scared stiff of the mention of the words "power lines" and would probably refuse a wayleave simply because /they think/ it might lower the value of the property or give their kids cancer.

3) Depending on the location, the changes could either be considered "change of use" or could come under the umbrella of a National Park, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, changes to a listed building, National Rivers Authority, Department of the Environment and a whole host of other bodies that delight in making anything simple into a nightmare of red-tape and expense. I come under several of the above and to put a 4'x4' tool store in my garden took over a year and cost, well, you wouldn't believe what the total came to.

4) At this time of the year, large parts of the UK are cold, damp and miserable and an garage in a block of garages is not a place you want to be. The roof and door are probably single ply steel sheeting with no heat insulation at all. The floor is probably concrete with no underlying insulation. The walls are the thinnest, single leaf, concrete block. If anyone noticed that you had left tools and things of value in it, they would be gone very quickly. So the temporary rigging of a power line for the odd times that you might want to use one makes sense.

I understand the business of red tape and diversity and that cutting corners is not the best approach in all circumstances., specially if you have national or park real estate or nothing but concrete in between.

Point Taken: why can't he get one of those 50-100 Ft retractable cord systems and attach it to his flat, this way all he needs to do is pull it out to the garage and pull to retract it back to his window or location when he's done., I've seen some with brackets that makes the cord assembly easy to unhook & put away safe from adversely fast hands.

all he'll ever need is to put a large hook on top side the garage or something to temporarily hold the cord up out of the way.

Finally ! A Real Answer to this Question ? hahaha

Thanks !

are woddchucks chucked yuck !!!

Palindra ???????? hmmmm you married or otherwise tarried ?

it kind of prjingles off the tongue };-)

=AEoy

I am the OP and in effect this sounds like I wanted to do (unless I have misunderstood you). However instead of owning a 50 to 100 ft length of cable, I own two 30 metre lengths.

Yup that's what I was going to do but the power losses and safety worried me a bit.

This sounded interesting so I checked out B&Q's website by searching for "generator".

I found this

They cost from £250 to £430!

What was the £100 one you are refiing to?

Perhaps this one

Interesting. Do you know where I can find the manufacturer's website as I would be interested in reading so specs on this and related generators.

My approach is strictly for temporary use. It will be there for a day at a time. (Maybe just overnight for a single night if I over- run the job and I don't want to put the cable and the rest of it all away in the evening and get it all out again in the morning).

Sue, that appears to be a very neat solution. It sounds simple, cheap and effective.

I like that and I think I should do the same on a temporary (one day) basis.

One variation is that I will need to lift and suspend the wire where is passes the end of the building furthest from my flat and goes off into the air. At that point I think I will need to mount a pulley in the wall (with the help of the tennamts in that flat) and then loop some string around the pulley such that the lower part of the loop can be reached from the ground. That way I don't need them to be in when I want to raise the cable up.

The thing I must think about is security. I will never ever hear the end of it if the string permitted some local ne'er-do-well to pull up a heavier duty rope and then to scale the wall by using it!

Maybe I will lift up the lower end of the pulley string from my own third story (top floor) flat by oulling another string to the pulley's string. IYSWIM!

Yup, I can see that this if fraught with dangers. In fact I wonder if it might be easier to go into the loft and thread the wire as far as I can along the inside (partiton wall permitting) and then seeing what the down drop requirements are from there onwards!