Extension cords

Most find that if the extension is at least as heavy gauge as the CS cord you should be ok.

Thanks for the info Tom. I'll have to see what gauge the wire is. Like i said the cord i used was a 12/3 which is pretty large. Most homes are wired with 10/3. I am going to make one up and see if it works. i'll let you know what happens.

quote:

Originally posted by Sam:
[qb]Thanks for the info Tom. I'll have to see what gauge the wire is. Like i said the cord i used was a 12/3 which is pretty large. Most homes are wired with 10/3. I am going to make one up and see if it works. i'll let you know what happens.[/qb]

Most home are wired these days with 12/3. Homes 20 years ago or so were wired with 14/3. With a 12 gauge wire you should be good for 2200 Watts. Or the same as a 20 amp circuit. Your smokette is 500 watts so unless you have an unreasonably long extension cord I don't see why 10-20 feet or so would give you that much of a voltage drop. It's always best to stay a close to the outlet as possible but look at it this way,,,,,,,,,the wiring that is in the wall is the same as an extension cord and I would bet it would be no larger that 12 gauge?! I hope this helps,,,I see a lot of stuff on here about extension cords and as long as you stay in the 12 gauge range you should be fine. It's when you get into the 16 gauge that most extension cords are that you could see a drop. Of course to get a 12 you would either have to get a contractor type cord or make your own. Heck,,,make your own. Go to the hardware store and buy a length and then two ends and Wa-La. Custom Cord for the Cookshack....

Hope I helped

Sharing the love,,,,,,,,,,,Iowa Man

I made up a short 10/3 ext. cord for my cs. Kinda over-kill but figured couldn't hurt and might help (might be wrong on that?). Seems to work fine. Anyway, just wanted to let you know you may have problems finding standard 3 prong male/female plugs to accomodate 10/3 cord size. I guess 10/3 stuff mainly for the 220 type plugs.

Iv'e done quite a bit of house wiring. Most wall outlets are wired with #12 wire and 20 amp breakers. Ceiling fixtures are wired with #14 wire and on 15 amp breakers. You should not have any problem with a #12 cord of that length carrying 500 watts since this is little more that a large light fixture. I suspect that the cord on the smokette is only #14. So your cord should not be the problem. You might want to check the connections on the cord to insure they are clean and not corroded and you may want to use a little bit of dielectric grease (sold in auto stores for high energy connections on auto ignition wires) on them to insure that you get a good connection.

Hope this helps.

If you're having problems with a temp getting above a certain level, take the extension cord off and try it without it.

I'll let Stuart jump in here, but we've proven a # of times that the wrong wire DOES have an impact on the unit being able to get to the highest temps.

Stuart...over to you.

Smokin'

A few calculations:

A 500 watt Smokette uses about 4.5 amps. 14ga wire is about .5 ohms/100ft "round trip" (there's actually 200' of wire in a 100' extension cord). Adding a 100' cord to your Smokette reduces the voltage at the heater by about 3 volts, reduces the heater wattage to about 480 watts, and causes the cord to dissipate about 10 watts - probably enough so the cord would seem just barely warm if it were coiled up. Not too up on thermodynamics, but I would guess the reduction of wattage from 500 to 480 would change the oven duty cycle by not more than 5-10%.

Consider another example: 24ga wire (telephone wire) is about 5.25 ohms/100 feet. Plug your smoker in with a phone cord and it's still 330 watts. But the cord dissipates 73 watts and will be on fire.

Still, you can't argue with experimental results - if it cooks without the extension cord and doesn't without, the cord must be the problem. I'd guess the connectors on the extension cord are a bigger factor than the wire itself. Maybe those who consistently need a longer cord should just rewire the unit with a longer cord?

Here's another thing to consider. Romex house wire is solid conductor. Extension cords are stranded conductor so thry'll be more flexible. Solid conductor wire is more efficient than stranded, therefore there will be a greater voltage loss across an equivalent length and gage of stranded wire. If you make your own extension cord, make it out of solid conductor house wire.

EZ