powere winders for water hose and electric cord

Goldencrazy wrote:
Anyone add power winders to their rigs after market. If so any advice

and to those who do have them...does the 50-amp cord need to be totally unwound to avoid heat build-up in the cord?

There isn't any more resistance(heat) in the cord whether it's wound up or laying out.

mccsix wrote:
There isn't any more resistance(heat) in the cord whether it's wound up or laying out.

I asked because I saw this on another forum:

Electrical engineer here-

The amount of inductance from an extension cord coiled loosly pretty negligable.

Heat does not increase resistance an appreciable amount in copper wire, either. If that were the case we wouldn't need circuit breakers as all circuits would be self-limiting.

The only reason to watch out for a coiled extension cord is the heat. The rule of thumb that I would use is to derate the amperage rating of the cord by 25-50% when coiled, or just bump to the next size larger cord. For a #12, coiled cord I would keep the continuous amperage draw below 10 amps. You can just touch it with your hand once in a while to see if it gets warm.

The danger is from the insulation on the wires melting and causing a fire as the wires arc together.

That makes sense. You wouldn't be able to dissipate the heat as well,
But it still centers on load vs wire diameter & length.

rk911 wrote:

Goldencrazy wrote:
Anyone add power winders to their rigs after market. If so any advice

and to those who do have them...does the 50-amp cord need to be totally unwound to avoid heat build-up in the cord?

I have never actually noticed such a problem. Many times I've only let out as much as needed to plug into the shore power pedestal. I have not noticed any heat build up to the power cord. At least, nothing that was noticeable. Then again, most of the time I have at least 75% (if not all of it) of the cord unwound to reach the pedestal anyway.

Interesting point though. Out of curiosity, it's something that I'm going to pay attention to this season and see - especially when running both AC's in the summer.

Our manual cord reel looks a lot like the one posted above.

An no, it's never a problem if we don't unwind it all.
Engineers "booklearning" sometimes leaves a bit to be desired in the real world.

Ours is the "Cablemaster" one. It's the type that all the cord is in a drum that you cannot see. There are plenty of times that, only about 10-12' of cable is stretched out to make it to the post. Never worried about what's left on the drum, inside the barrel, getting too hot. That cord is about 1" thick or, maybe even 1.125 thick. I'm pretty sure there's enough insulation on it to keep from fires starting.
Scott