What is a Suicide Cord and Why It Could Kill You

hey gang it's paul with studpack as a lot of you know we live in southern louisiana and what does that mean for us it means hurricanes we have a whole season dedicated just to hurricanes it started a couple of weeks ago on june 1st and it ends at the end of november five long months and with all the damage a hurricane does what a lot of people worry about is power outages it can be anywhere from 30 minutes two hours two weeks you never know and not having power in southern louisiana in the summer is a real drag your ac doesn't work so you're sweaty and you can't sleep at night your fridge doesn't work so you're starving and you're fumbling around the house with flashlights candles or maybe your phone if it still has a light on it so what do you do you get yourself a backup generator now they fall into one of basically two categories you can get more or less a permanent one that hooks up to the natural gas on your house it turns on automatically when the power goes out and it shuts off automatically when the power is restored the other option is a portable generator that's what we have here at this house when the power goes out you drag it out of the shed fill it up with gas hope it starts hook it up to your house and you're good to go so we're on this project today because we have a deadly generator set up we're going to show you what's wrong with it fix it and hopefully save a couple of lives so how does a portable generator work well we pulled it out and it's right here takes gasoline you start it up and it's generating power now you can do this in one of two ways you can open up these and you can plug in a bunch of extension cords run them through the open door in the back of your house run one to the fridge one to a tv maybe one to some lamp somewhere maybe one to some plugs something to power your phone get your internet back who knows but you're kind of limited there because it won't run your ac and we don't live in southern california anymore so we need ac it's a big deal so most people tap into the 240 here and this generator is rated at 30 amps it will run their ac but you can't run a lot of stuff in addition to that so they'll run their ac for a little while cool down the house turn off the ac and then turn on their fridge kind of a pain but it's a lot better than being without power right now the way this works you got this twist lock plug right here it only goes in one way and then you twist it so it doesn't come out under the vibrations of the generator the other end of it is going to plug in right here and power up this cable that's in the wall and we're going to talk about all this later there's a lot wrong right here but anyway for right now this cable goes up this wall come on in here with me over the ceiling of this storage room and it comes down into this breaker number two and four in this panel this is a brand new panel we put in what about a year ago well look there it is right there april 22nd 2021. the date on there of course excel spreadsheet with all the power the the uh the red is the generator unit and then this red is the modem that way i knew during the project never to turn off her modem because she works at home right pretty cool that cable is coming down the wall into this panel and the black and the red are landed on this breaker number two and four and it's a 30 amp two pole and of course it's in the off position i'm gonna try to turn it on but i can't why not because of this very important piece of hardware called an interlock the only way for me to turn this on is to turn the main off we wish we could show you but the owners are home and i think they get mad if we turn off their ac don't you think jordan but check it out if i were to turn the main off then i could slide this to the right via these slotted holes and then i can turn that one on and why do we need that interlock why is that so important you're protecting the lives of the linemen during a hurricane we have crews they're driving down i-10 from texas florida louisiana mississippi to help us out and if florida has a storm all our crews are going over there to help them out not if when that's exactly right so it's very important because what happens if you have this on the main and your breaker on for the generator you're back feeding this panel with the power from the generator you're also back feeding the main power lines and we have step down transformers that bring high voltage to low voltage but when current's flowing the other way now it's a step up transformer and you can kill somebody so it's very important to have a lockout and we did that on this panel when we put it in here sorry man i'm out of breath it is hot in this little room right here so let's get outside the problem is not here we did this back in april look at this nice panel here bud yeah yeah we see it we see it all right excel spreadsheet all right let's head outside and show you where the real problem is so what are the problems well there's a few of them right so i'm going to start with this box back here check it out it's a metal old work box and it's fastened to this hardy plank a cement product with two little screws right there and look how loose it is would you want to plug this into that during a storm no the other problem is this receptacle is rated for 20 amps just like this plug it's underrated because we have a 30 amp generator now the third problem and the biggest problem is this cord used to connect the generator to the house it's called a suicide cord how come because it has two male ends what's so bad about that check this out let's plug this in into the generator and now what do we have if jordan were to start this generator or a homeowner were to start the generator without putting this in the wall first i've got 240 volts across here and it's going to kill me i'm going to be standing before the pearly gates and saint peter's going to say dude how come you didn't watch a studpack video so what's our game plan we're going to gut all of this we're going to remove this receptacle and we're going to remove that box we're going to cut out the drywall on the back and put in some blocking that's going to allow us to mount this nice reliant pb30 power inlet box and it's made especially for generator cord connections just like that we're going to open this weather tight door and it has a male receptacle then we're going to put a female plug on there so this is no longer a suicide cord and we can connect the two together let's get started so let's demo all this now of course this is not hot right the breaker's off and we're not tied in with the generator let's cut this old tape off of here loosen those screws two [Music] yep there we go all right boy what next we got the clamp and we got these two guys let's pull this out look at that that's all that's holding it crazy huh let me loosen that clamp in the back and then we'll see if we get the box out just gonna remove the whole clamp let's see if these wings will go back down when you tighten this screw these fold behind the drywall so i'm to loosen the screw and see if they'll go back down well there we go just run it off of there it fell on the wall but we can grab it [Music] perfect all right you know what i'm going to do i'm going to grab these i don't want to cut the insulation on this knockout see how hard it is to get out of there so i'm just going to pull those get them straight like that and then i can pull the box off the cable without damaging that insulation just like that cool man let me go to the truck i'm gonna get a long drill bit we'll drill through the drywall on the other side to get our bearings right then we'll cut open the drywall and put in some blocking to securely mount this guy i keep a quarter inch by 12 inch drill bit in my toolbox in the trunk just for such occasions check it out hopefully i don't drill through a paint can or a gasoline canner here we go let's see where we're at bud all right [Music] cool there we go all right our next step we're going to put a piece of blocking across here so we have a nice strong place to mount that box to because all we have here is some cement board so let's measure this and go outside and cut that piece of plywood [Music] test fit a little bit of a tap yep all right let's go drill some pocket holes in it for some pocket screws we'll get this thing mounted [Music] you think that'll hold it bud pocket screws are a good way to do this otherwise you're using dimensional lumber like a 2x10 or something putting a screw at an angle could poke through this way i know i'm not going to blow through the other side right i think six screws are enough maybe i should have put a lot more i'm kidding it's going to be strong man just like we like it [Applause] all right done next step right that looks good huh nice and strong so now we're going to put our box just where we want it we decided we're going to line up the bottom of the box with the bottom of our siding that's going to look nice and it completely covers all of this mess so let's take out our knockout right here this is a concentric knockout the inner circle is for a half inch connector and if you knock out that ring in addition now you get a three quarter inch connector just a screwdriver and my linesman let's knock out that middle one just like that let's put this up here jordan i'm gonna get my nice klein level they sent me look at that guy pretty fancy huh let's make sure we're completely covered looks good get level pencil thank you and we're going to mark our wood because we've got to drill a hole through there with a hole saw so our cable can get through there so let me run to the truck get the hole saw we'll cut that we're almost ready to run some cable all right let's get our connector i like these metal ones for something like this put it in our hole that we knocked out with the lock nut on the other side all right let's tighten that lock nut a couple of taps just like that it's all we need all right bud let's put this on there level it again we'll mark our three screw locations and we'll pull the cable through there you ready i got our cable through the hole we're gaining on it let's put it through our clamp and we'll tighten these two screws and then we're almost ready to mount this to the wall but man it is hot and muggy out here look at that nice huh now you know what the trick is going to be tightening those two screws because i can't get back there i can can you yeah if i hold it like that can you get back there yeah good job look how great that's gonna look nice cool all right let me grab some screws out of the truck we'll level this one more time screw that to our plywood we're ready to wire it up [Music] connecting the wires is pretty straightforward the factory has already connected this green ground wire to this one marked g for ground the white neutral goes to the w terminal right here so all we're left with is the black and the red and they go on the x and the y and it doesn't matter which one goes where the red could go on the y and the black could go on the x or vice versa so we're going to make those connections we're going to take this ground along with this one from the cable and mount them both on that lug right there let's get to it man i'm sweating up a storm right here these summer afternoons after a rainstorm killer i'm just going to check this other side the factory did if i can get in there that's a little loose i got more than half a turn on it all right we'll just put the black on right here and i'm going all the way in so we don't see any copper right here we don't want any shiners tighten this one two more connections this was the part i was worried about the most as if i had enough cable we just made it huh yep look how look at that ground look how short it is i did bring some cable but i really didn't want to make a connection in here an electrician who taught me how to do all this stuff he said once you're done making all your connections and you twisted this around a bunch go back around and make one more pass see that i got like a quarter turn on that one because the wire is going to move look at that they were tight but i'm getting another quarter turn i'm going to get my linemen and put a 90 degree bend in here and go on the bottom of that lug close i might have bent that too much i got some room there we go wow just enough put that on the top the people who come behind you are going to be like this guy was precise he probably measured that with some calipers or something if worse had come to worse and we didn't have enough cable i would have had to go in the attic and try to feed you a little more right right or we would have just reached our hand in the hole we cut and tugged on it pretty hard oh man what do you think i think that's really nice all the grounds are bonded together right here our white is on the lug mark w our black is on the one mark x and our red is on the one marked y sweet yep see that little lip on the back for weatherproofing it has to go behind here all right so i might have to back off that screw a little that seems like a design flaw huh well i mean there we go that's not supposed to be oh but i'm not on here see if i can go up enough and not come off the back but get behind the screw that is so much better than what it was huh wow check that out so you saw how careful we were when we cut this out that's because we wanted to just reuse this piece i did bring some extra in case i broke it but why cut a patch when you can save the one you took out right right all right let's screw it in we'll go mix up some hot mud and give this thing a quick coat all right gang that looks awesome a little bit of fiberglass tape and some 20-minute mud we made that patch but it acted like five-minute mud it started going off in the pan before we even got in this room maybe i'm so hot and the mud was hot but that's done and this looks great it looks a thousand times greater and it is a million times safer the only thing is left for us to do is to get another cord we could get a female plug and put it on here but who in the world would ever modify an extension cord bozos that's nuts right i would never dream of such a thing i'll probably order one online the right one and just have it shipped here directly to him so make sure your like button has a proper backup power receptacle just like the one we put in then you can smash it for us ask a question drop a comment subscribe if you haven't already because the more support we get the faster we're out in texas rebuilding jordan's house good bud all right good job let's do it you

Channel: Stud Pack

Views: 1,195,141

Keywords: studpack, stud pack, suicide cord, generator, hurricane, south, tropical storm, flooding, disaster, backup generator, standby generator, electrical, how to hook up a generator, portable generator, diy extension cord

Id: I_fxXGb8t_k

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2022