How Pros Wrap Extension Cords, Cables & Hoses

winding up extension cords or hoses can be an absolute mess especially when they get tangled and have knots and all that fun stuff I'm going to show you a couple of easy ways to work with these now what I learned when I was younger and this is how I had done it for most of my younger life was you put it in your hand and you wrap it around your elbow like this and on you go so you do that and then you plug these together but then what happens is you go to use the thing and you see if I throw it out here for example so as I come to bring this out I'm bringing chunks of cord like this and hopefully they eventually work themselves out and then this thing just stays in a big knot and just doesn't want to doesn't want to work I end up with this when I was in college I was taking some classes that taught me what these key grips used when they were wrapping up their audio and video cables on set this works for concerts as well where you have these huge spools of wire and you need to feed it to the musician or you need to follow around the camera and you don't want everything to get tangled up so the over under technique is pretty simple the idea is you do one of the first Loops over for example like this so I'm using my dominant hand to do the wrapping my non-dominant hand as a shelf a holder here so I've got one just a regular Loop but the next one I'm going to go under so I'm actually bringing this one and I'm twisting my wrist under so your forearm is underneath the loop so I do it like that and then I pull it out and let it hang grab another arm length and then I'm going to put put this next one over like this one just a regular one next one again is going to go under so you see I kind of do a little a little toss like this to get my Loop going and I end up with my forearm under I hook it onto my left hand my non-dominant hand and then pull out and then grab my over now if need be I can feel the twist in this so I can twist it or untwist it really to get it nice and straight that's really what we're going after here is to make sure that none of these are twisted up and having these little kinks or bends or bows in them so that wasn't over so I'm going to go to an under now like that and then an over and again on that one I had to twist it I felt like I could feel that if I go like this see what it's doing it's fighting me on that so I want to relax the chord as best I can and in this case what I need to do is twist it this way because it was about 180 degrees Twisted the wrong direction now I can grab my next one and go under over under over and so on so on that one I need a little twist on there so I'm going to go like that then like this and so on now when I'm done I've got a couple of things going on one I like to always keep these little velcro twisty ties on here and they're just it's just a velcro strap that's got hooks on one side loops on the other and then I can wrap it up and then tie it off like that so this thing's ready to hang up throw in the back of your truck whatever you need to do ideally you want to keep one side to where it left off so I ended off with the female side in the front and the male side in the back here so I want to make sure I keep those in order as best I can and that's what your twisty tie here will do your Velcro so now if I want go to use this on a job site or somewhere else in the house then I'm going to just twist this off like this the velcro just leave it on the cord then I can leave I can take this part for example let's say I've got it plugged in over here check this out you can set that down and as I walk away from this it's going to unloop itself pretty much perfectly every time just nice and flat no twists no Kinks no problems look at that would you look at that now to show that in more of a real time here's what this is going to look like over under over under over under over under and I'm kind of feeling this out as I go to make sure that there's no twists or Loops in there but the cool part is once you do it once unless something Tangles it outside of what your you know your wrapping process it's going to kind of stay in place and there we go the other cool part is check this out if I grab both ends and toss this it's not going to be Tangled At All look at that I mean just get a look at that just lays out nice and flat just like we want it no issues when you're working with a hose the over under technique is the ideal way to go so I'm going to start with one end wrap it like this now this one I don't even remember how this was wrapped up last time so we're going to just kind of handle it as it comes so far so good this one you have to really keep an open hand here especially if it's a longer hose I believe this is a 50 footer at least and then sit it on top like that so you might need to stack it a little bit for a hose just to give yourself enough room to hold it so that was an under so I'm going to twist it so I can do the next over and then grab my next under so you kind of have to Wrangle it a little bit if it hasn't been done properly in the past there we go so I'm just gonna keep wrapping it around like this almost done I'm running out of hands all right and then our last over so now we've got a nice coil here and the cool part is this coil is going to be so easy to work with now as I unwind this this thing's just going to come totally free nice and easy with no issues and I can take as much of this as I want it's just going to come right out just the way we want it the entire time all the way down to the end so that's why the over under technique is the perfect technique to use for hoses the second technique that is totally different from the first one and it kind of looks like a mess but works really well I call it the chain technique and it works also really well but for a different purpose you wouldn't use this with a hose but for an extension cord this works super well again we've got a 50 foot cord here I just did this with a hundred foot cord it works great but what I'll do is I'm going to start by taking the two ends and then plugging them into each other and then I'm going to follow it along whoops kind of fist over fist here until I get to the end the halfway point right here once we've got our halfway mark like this we're just going to take that Loop that we created and I'll call this part over here the tail we're going to feed the tail up through the loop and then we end up with the tail again and then our Loop so I'm going to feed the tail through the loop I'm going to keep these into fairly small sections like this and all I'm doing is every time I make a new loop I end up with a new tail and I put that through it like so and I just keep those oops keep those tail pieces together and it's kind of twisting in my hands that's okay and then just keep feeding it through like this so just to kind of show this real slow I've got the one in my hand I've got the bottom tail piece and I'm just going to push it through and make that Loop which creates a new loop on top over and over until I get to the end now when I get to the end like this I can either store it like this and then I've just got my chain right here and that works out great this is really durable in fact I can take this thing and wad it up I can toss it onto the ground put it under the seat whatever you need and then you just grab the female and male ends here and you're good to go now the cool part is you don't need to unravel the whole thing to use it let's say I have a 10 or 15 foot span I need to run I can then just pull these through both ends pull it through once and then Watch What Happens so as I start to go through here it's going to untangle itself and I can release as much as I want or as little as I want let's say I just need this much so I'm going to leave this chain part intact and then run this way one way and this one the other way and I'm good to go then I don't have to redo the whole thing in fact let me plug these back into each other because I like doing that and also protects the prongs on here from getting stepped on then you remember I ended up with this here so I'm just going to pick up where I left off Loop it through Loop it through Loop it through and then I'm done and then I've got it ready to go for next time and if you need to you can in fact just undo the entire thing just by pulling on it like this so it will all come all the way down right down to the end nothing's tangled up and you're ready to go for next time so that's another way you can keep things totally tidy and in order and avoid undoing too much getting twists and Knots and Tangles and all those things that plague us with extension cords audio cables hoses and everything else I don't recommend the chain method for hoses because they're usually not quite as pliable as an extension cord an HDMI cable that sort of thing so keep that in mind but hopefully you found this helpful I'm Nils with learn to DIY thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 272,672

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: L7av0C0jWQw

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023