Mains electric cable safety
I have on a number of occasions, when walking past caravans and motorhome seen the mains cable wrapped tightly round a reel.
This is a very dangerous practice as leaving the cable wrapped round a reel etc can cause it to overheat and sometimes catch fire.
Those of us who can remember the one or two bar electric fires, which when switched on used to heat up and glow red. This was achieved by wrapping the wire round a central core and, in effect caused friction when the current was passed through the wire.
I have personal experience of seeing someone who was badly burned - my mother received extensive burns to her face and hands during World War 2 whilst serving in the RAF!!
I wonder when wardens give advice about parking correctly on a pitch, could they also advise against coiled cables.
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This has been over discussed for years on this and other forums and magazines!!!!.Unless you intend to run your heating on 3 kw at the same time as your domestic style kettle and toaster,your hair drier,your microwave oven and your tumble drier/washing machine then there should not be a major problem as it will be your cable and connectors that melt not mine!!!!!
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It’s already in the club’s hooking up to the mains leaflet, WW. Found in Advice and Training.
https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/uk-holidays/useful-information/hooking-up-to-the-mains/
While not lessening the importance of what you say, there has to be a limit to the amount of advice wardens can give when we book in. As well as what they already tell us, people have said recently that they’d like wardens to emphasise the speed limit and one way system, that parents should supervise their off spring and that the rules about dogs on sites should be quoted. We could end up queuing for an hour to get through Reception and there’s a definite risk of information overload which would be counterproductive.
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Taking this safety matter one stage further, I recently hooked up, on site, found that my trip switch did not work, plugged in my socket tester and found I had no earth !
Investigation revealed that the earth wire has pulled out of its pin
could have been right dodgy.
So treat your electrics with care - and don't lead a lead plugged in etc.
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maybe a national tv and radio campaign along the same lines as seat belts,driving whilst on the phone,not driving in a motorway lane with a red cross,tailgating,speeding etc.would get peoples attention but they would still think that rules and advice do not apply to them !!!!!!!!!
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For how many fires caused by coiled cables?
Maybe off grid camping is the answer, no cables deployed soon not only is the slight risk of fire alleviated, but trespassers won't encounter trip hazards when taking a short cut through your pitch
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very many continental vanners use the same reels that David mentions.
its very rare to see one fully unwound, they generally sit under (or close to) the van with only enough to reach the bollard being exposed.
the reels look to contain many, many metres of cable but most of it seems to stay wound up.
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It does not matter what "info" the site team give to members on arrival ,or the site info leaflet that is normally handed to arrivals ,its 99% guaranteed that the said members will query what they need to do or anything else they have already been "advised"already,as most arrivals do not "hear"anything as they are only interested to get on site and pitched up
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he knows everything 'club/warden/office' it seems....
who are we to disagree....?
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Not often an issue over here though. So far only one site we have stopped on has had a 16 amp supply. The rest have been either 6 or 10 amp. I think a more significant issue is the laying if them across pitch entrances and roads due to the placement of EHU bollards. Particularly when manovering a heavy motor van across them, there is a real risk of damage. I have never come across that in the UK, yet.
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Depends on the type of site David. Not particularly uncommon on a lot of the small municipal sites, such as we are on at the moment. I carry a 10 and 25 metre length and have always managed to route ours away from harm. Fortunately it is not a problem I have ever come across in the UK.
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Assuming that you have the correct cable size, 2.5mm2 for a 16A supply then at continuous load of 16A you need to dissipate about 100watt.
Assuming you have 1.5mm2 cable for 16A then you dissipate about 160watt.
Both for a 25M cable.
Your cable reel should not overheat. Why?
You need to uncoil about half of it to plug to post.
You don't have any appliances that require 16A continuous.
The coil is free to radiate into air.
Have a look at the hookup cables for sale, Google search, and you will see that they are all coiled into an open coil, none are supplied with a reel. This is because they are not supposed to be on reel.
Worryingly there is also a number of cable tidies for sale, the cheapest is a solid plastic spool sold as hookup lead tidy. The centre is narrow and the centre and sides are solid.
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As we are becoming more technical now, we need to also consider that the open-air temperature in UK is often very low, combined with a steady flow of cold rainwater. These combine to provide cooling to the cable, coil, drum, bobbin, whatever and reduce the temperature.
I alwys uncoil all of the cable. For those of us used to working with ropes it makes it easier and faster to work with, as well as avoiding the cable getting a "set" such that when uncoiled it behaves like a stretched out slinky.
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I found this
"The normal cable ratings assume that the wire can adequately disperse heat generated in the cable due to the current flowing."
"If you coil it up and use close to the maximum rating then it stands a good chance of melting the plastic insulation and then causing a short."
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One of the problems is that the Cable Drum type of storage, usually in orange, is often sold, alongside the cables in caravan accessory shops, for 'new' caravanners to buy, with no warning of the potential dangers of not fully unwinding the cable.
The cable drums with a solid core ARE NOT ideal storage for a live use cable. Far better are the open centered double hooked type of cable storage, that allow airflow all through the cable even when fully wound.
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“The cable drums with a solid core ARE NOT ideal storage for a live use cable. Far better are the open centered double hooked type of cable storage, that allow airflow all through the cable even when fully wound.”
Ive seen a cable stored like this also go up in flames. My father made up a cable tidy of a similar design consisting of two hooks about 15” apart, mounted on a flat board this was for a extension lead for my mother to use when hoovering the house. On one occasion it caught fire during use because it wasn’t unwound.
Passing a current through a cable produces a magnetic field which vibrates the molecules in the cable ( ever walked under pylons and heard them sing?) winding a cable into coils will just intensify the fields and vibration causing heat, the insulation to soften, melt and possibly combust. It doesn’t need a core!
You’ll possibly note that the fuse/ breaker doesn’t trip when a cable stored as a coil is damaged. That’s because it’s not from over current. The trip only happens when the insulation has melted enough for the wires to short out.
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If it was kept in the awning it could be used as an awning heater.
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Vibrating molecules? Wound cable creates a magnetic field and the inductance increases the impedance of the coil. This won’t create added resistance because it is reactance not resistance although, theoretically, it can affect the ability of the fuse in the plug to clear a fault. There have allegedly been cases of very tightly wound cables creating a large enough inductance to prevent fault clearance and allow excess current and hence heating and fire in the cable. Some calculations that I did proved that this is not an issue for hook-up cable.
The only danger is that tightly coiled cables prevent the heat produced by cable resistance being dissipated by air flow. As has been said repeatedly above, in the UK hook-up cables are 2.5 mm2 (unlike most continental cables) and it would require quite high current and high ambient temperatures for a problem to arise HOWEVER since 99% of the population are unlikely to be aware of the current they are drawing and the cable size they are using it is far safer to provide universal advice applicable to all installations at home or on a caravan site and that advice should always be to uncoil extension cables. Keep it simple.
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With respect.
It did not catch fire because it was not unwound. Even the biggest hoover is rated at about 6A or 1.5kw, assuming the cable was less than 25m and of an adequate size 1.00mmm2 or 1.5mm2 (as it should be for the 13A rating) then this should have had virtually no temperature rise, certainly not for the time it takes to hoover a house. There was an issue with the cable either the conductor size or more probable conductor damage.
You are also confusing Ohms law and AC theory. Induced current is another issue altogether. But it is also a good reason to not coil cables onto drums.
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At the National Rally and similar events exhibitors give away free promotional tote bags. Just the job for electrical lead, Aquaroll connections, bicycle helmet and stuff, and many other caravaning stores.
If you dislike the advertising you can always turn them outside in!
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