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Cat 5 cable as electrical wire
- Thread starter Robroy
- Start date
In my experience as an occupational safety and health professional the two groups that are the biggest PIA to deal with when it comes to workplace safety are chemists and electricians
I was visiting the home of a guy that bought it from the widow of a guy that was in upper management of Puget Power (In Renton, WA.) The guy had died and my friend had bought the home.
He got a call from the electric company after he had been in the house a few months becase he had negative power usage. To cut to the chase, the previous owner had somehow wired his shop building electrical system to reverse, or "undo" the power usage at the house, but it had to be monitored or you could undo too much and end up with negative power usage. Since my friend didn't know about this, well, his usage came out negative and he got the call...
I got a flat in my old 1954 chevy by wearing throuh the tread. I'm driving down the road and suddenly I hear a ssss - ssss - ssss - ssss. I pull over and watch the tire go down through a hole surrounded by an oval of for layers of cloth and four of rubber.
Well than, Technically The power co. owed HIM $$$ .
Where was the juice for the shed originated ?
Generator?
If that was on a meter and be just backfed the house circuitry it would basically be like taking a dollar out of your left front pocket, and putting it in your right front pocket, and thinking you just made a dollar.
I can't remember how it worked, technically, but it was hooked up in such a way that the end result was that one circuit moved the meter backwards while the other moved it forward. The (now deceased) Puget Power employee was always careful to make sure the net result at the end of the month was that the meter recorded "some" power usage. But the new owner didn't know about it so they ended up with negative usage, raising big red flags at the power company.
It's frickin hilarious. Wynona's Big Brown Beaver is one of the funniest music vid's I've ever seen. And Shake Hands With Beef...
Yup I love Wynonas big brown beaver.
I'm NOT too crazy about his music overall
BUT I will give credit where credit is due.
So you can find CAT 5 cable with 300V insulation ratings (although a lot of it is also not rated that way), and if the pairs were bonded together it could carry the 1.25A of current that 150W lightbulb would draw just fine without heating (at least where just the cable itself is concerned).
However I would consider it a significant safety and liability concern and definitely not something UL or the NEC would look kindly on. As people have suggested, the insulation on most 4-pair CAT 5 cable is relatively thin and brittle. Dealing with it on a daily basis I regularly see 4-pair CAT 5e kinked, cracked, abraded, and cut, even in low-traffic datacenter environments. Unless you are specifically using outdoor rated / UV resistant cable, it also does not stand up well at all to sunlight or water; the jacketing cracks in short order.
The connectors are also a concern. If he is using the proper 120V rated NEMA 5-15 connectors, I would be worried about the thin wires simply snapping off leaving a bare, live end of a cable. If he is using RJ-45 connectors, they would present a significant shock hazard due to the exposed contacts.
The wire is also so thin (and presumably unfused) that any short would end up burning it in short order without giving the 15 or 20A breaker back at the panel any sweat -- and with RJ-45 connectors a short would be a significant "when, not if" type of concern.
While the wires may not be bursting into flame the minute you plug it in, there is almost no good reason to do this and a lot of ways it could end up killing someone. Just stop by Home Depot and pick up some nice 14-3 SOOW cord and NEMA 5-15 or L5-15 parts.
I have put together some similarly questionable things in the past (I think most people who deal with electronics have), but it is never anything I would expose other people to.
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+1 on the frailty of the insulating jacket on CAT5 cable. It's really not designed to be moved around all that much.
IF something were to happen with this wiring setup on a gig that resulted in damage, fire or personal injury at a venue? Then the band could be facing some serious liability. Electrical codes are in place to do things with a good degree of overkill because of the potentially destructive nature of high voltage and/or current draw. The insulating jacket on standard electrical wiring is designed to take the wear and tear of regular use, flexing, bending and coiling.
It's all a novel idea. Until there's an electrical fire or someone gets hurt.
IF something were to happen with this wiring setup on a gig that resulted in damage, fire or personal injury at a venue? Then the band could be facing some serious liability. Electrical codes are in place to do things with a good degree of overkill because of the potentially destructive nature of high voltage and/or current draw. The insulating jacket on standard electrical wiring is designed to take the wear and tear of regular use, flexing, bending and coiling.
It's all a novel idea. Until there's an electrical fire or someone gets hurt.
Now I'm sure all of us McGyver types have rigged something up, spur of the moment, emergency, using what is available, as a [TEMPORARY] work around to get us out of a tight spot.
That is improvising, adapting, and overcoming, an unexpected fail.
Spending time "doing the math" and engineering and fabricating something like that, intentionally to subvert acceptable alternatives...
Well in MY opinion, that IS the fail.
That is improvising, adapting, and overcoming, an unexpected fail.
Spending time "doing the math" and engineering and fabricating something like that, intentionally to subvert acceptable alternatives...
Well in MY opinion, that IS the fail.
I firmly agree.
This family is very much like my family when I was the age of the children. We built our own home from scratch. My father would scrounge around the junk wood pile at the contruction site of what is now the Valley Medical center. We used the same wood for our foundation forms that they used for their concrete walls.
My parents took "a penny saved is a penny earned" to its limits. There was so much focus on saving a dime that not enough was put on making a dollar. It impacts my thinking to this day. I have to constantly fight it. But this is the problem this particular guy has and I'm really trying to cure him of it to some degree.
I've cut and pasted some responses here and emailed to him. There are times when things need to be done the RIGHT way.
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That's actually a safety device that gets misused as a ground lift instead of the proper use to add a ground to an old outlet. You are supposed to put a screw through the tab on the bottom into the grounded wall box.like this, for example...
