Fortunately, many common electrical tools can operate without danger of motor damage when powered by a 16 gauge cord that is 100 feet long. To make sure you're properly protected, use the following sizing guidelines below. All you must do is obtain the motor amperage from the plate on the tool.

You will find this information on the small metal plate where the serial number and model number is listed. Usually, you will see an amperage rating. A tool may say it's rated for 8 amps.

That's amperage. Ohms Law If, for some odd reason, you see watts listed instead of amps, you can convert watts to amps easily! Here is how you do that: The formula for the conversion is: Voltage x Amps = Watts. In other words, don't use a 100 foot cord for a project that is only 20 feet away. Purchase and maintain an assortment of different length cords. Multiple Tools On 1 Cord?

I was guilty of this infraction many years ago before I fully understood all that's involved. On construction sites, we'd commonly feed multiple saws and drills from one cord. If the circuit breaker at the panel is working fine, then you'll pop the breaker if there's a current overload. But, if you've got a smaller-gauge extension cord, it's possible to overheat the cord and melt the insulation before the circuit breaker would trip! However, if the breaker is bad you can either burn up the cord or damage tools from voltage drops. Use common sense. Sizing an Extension Cord Step 1 Determine the amperage of the tool(s) being used.

Here is a handy list of some common electric power tools. The average amperage is listed below the tool. Always check on your tool label for its specific amperage. Here are some COMMON amperage ratings of tools around your home: • Circular saw: 12-15 amps • Power drill: 3-7 amps • Hedge Trimmer: 2-3 amps • Weed Wacker: 2-4 amps • Electric Chain Saw: 7-12 amps • Leaf Blower: 6-12 amps • Electric Lawn Mower: 6-12 amps • Table Saw: 14-20 amps! • Reciprocating Saw: 6-8 amps • Router: 4-6 amps Step 2 Calculate the length of the cord you will need. Of course you want to determine the maximum distance you think you will be from a permanent electrical outlet.

Step 3 Use the following list to select the proper gauge extension cord. Remember, wire gauge refers to the thickness of the actual copper wire. As a wire gets thicker it can carry more electricity (amps).

To confuse us, some idiot decided that as a wire gets thicker (bigger) the gauge number should get smaller! Here's what I mean.

A 14-gauge wire can handle LESS current than a 12-gauge wire. The number 14 is bigger than 12. You should be! 16-Gauge Cords: Any 16-gauge cord between 0 and 100 feet long will adequately handle tool loads up to 10 amps.

14-Gauge Cords: Any 14-gauge cord between 0 and 50 feet long will adequately handle loads between 10 and 15 amps. 12-Gauge Cords: If your tool load is between 10 and 15 amps and the length of the cord is 50 to 100 feet, you need a 12-gauge cord to safely power any tool. CAUTION: Most circuits in ordinary houses are wired with 14-gauge solid copper wire. This means in the circuit breaker panel you'll see a 15-amp breaker. You may purchase a 12-gauge extension cord thinking that you'll be able to operate a powerful table saw but the breaker will probably trip when you load the saw. Remember, the circuit is rated for the SMALLEST SIZED cable or wire in the circuit.

In your city or town. Then add to that the fact that other things, like a garage light, or some other appliance could be on the same circuit you've plugged the extension cord into. This adds to the total load on the circuit! You may think you have 15 amps available going to your extension cord, but several of those amps might be in use from something else. I really appreciated your website info regarding what size extension cord I might need.

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Could you give me your opinion. I have a Taylor soft serve Ice cream machine (Refrigeration basically off and on) that will be used at wedding receptions and out doors. Ideally I wanted to get a 100 foot extension cord. The machine states its 16 amps at 110 v and requires a dedicated 20 amp circuit/outlet and the cord coming out of machine states 12/3 300volts. I was hoping maybe a 10/3 size extension cord at 100 feet would provide up to and maintain 20 amps by the time you hit the 100 feet, but not so sure. Would I need to go with an 8/3 to have at least 20 amps available at 100 feet with current drop, I would think that the 8/3 for sure would maintain up to 20 amps but cannot find anything beyond a 50 foot in the 8/3 size but have found the 10/3 in the 100 foot range everywhere.

What do you think between the 8/3 and 10/3 for maintaining 20 amps at 100 feet. I appreciate any opinions or math formula's used to figure this out. Driverpack Solution 14 Free Download Full Version Iso more. I figure if machine is 16 amps then giving the extra up to 20 is most likely the way to go, I guess. Thanks much Best regards Tiffany.

The current rating is based on the size and length of the cord. There is no perfect conductor, so even solid copper wire creates resistance (ohms). The smaller the conductor and the longer the wire, the more the resistance and therefore the less current the cord can handle. A 100' 12 ga. Cord connected to a second 100' 12 ga. Cord is going to allow less current (amps) than a single 100' 12 ga.

That is actually what I was searching when I came across this site--the allowable current with subsequent lengths. Also, if you are mixing cord gauges, use the heaviest gauge (smallest number) closest to the receptacle. Thus, if you have a 12 ga., 14 ga. Cord that you are using, plug the 12 ga. Cord into the outlet, the 14 ga. Cord into the 12 ga.

And the 16 ga. Cord will be providing power to the appliance.

Bowe Bergdahl in an undated photograph from the United States Army. Army, via Reuters Twenty minutes after Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his remote Army outpost in Afghanistan in the middle of a summer night, carrying little more than vacuum-packed chicken, knives, water and a compass, he began to realize just how dire his predicament was. “I’m going, ‘Good grief, I’m in over my head,’ ” Sergeant Bergdahl said. “Suddenly, it really starts to sink in that I really did something bad,” he continued. “Or, not bad, but I really did something serious.” Sergeant Bergdahl recounted his experience publicly for the first time in the premiere episode of the second season of the podcast “,” which was released at 6 a.m. In interviews with the screenwriter Mark Boal, he explained in his own words why he had left his base in June 2009, an action that prompted a manhunt involving thousands of troops and led him to spend nearly five years in brutal captivity under the Taliban.

Sergeant Bergdahl is awaiting a ruling on whether his case will go before a court-martial. By agreeing to let “Serial” use his interviews with Mr. Boal, who was conducting research for a movie he plans to make, Sergeant Bergdahl will have a chance to make his case to a wide audience. “As you can imagine, he’s been the subject of a lot of sound-bite coverage,” Mr. Boal, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and producer, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “He has a definite point of view about hit-and-run TV reporting, and so this was the opposite of that.” The high-profile topic is a significant departure from the show’s celebrated first season, in which the narrator, Sarah Koenig, plucked a story about a murder in a Baltimore suburb out of obscurity. She spent many hours interviewing Adnan Syed, who was convicted of the crime in 2000.

“Serial” was downloaded more than 100 million times and earned a Peabody Award. It was widely viewed as an influence in a Maryland court’s decision to to introduce new evidence, an important step toward potentially getting a new trial. In the first episode of the new season, Ms. Koenig said that as Sergeant Bergdahl stood, scared, in the open Afghan terrain, he briefly contemplated returning to his outpost, but decided against it. Slate Digital Trigger Drum Replacer Download there. “After all, the guys there are watching for people coming toward them, and they’re manning big machine guns,” she said. “He might get shot.” Photo. Advertisement “When I got back to the F.O.B., you know, they could say, ‘You left your position,’ ” he said, referring to his forward operating base.

“But I could say: ‘Well, I also got this information. So, what are you going to do?’ ” That would have been a “bonus point,” he added, to mitigate “the hurricane of wrath that was going to hit me.” As the new season begins, Sergeant Bergdahl’s case has reached a critical juncture: At Fort Bragg, N.C., Gen.

Abrams is expected to decide soon what charges he should face. Army prosecutors initially accused him of desertion (a potential five-year sentence) and endangering troops who searched for him (a potential life sentence).

But the Army’s investigator, Lt. Dahl, at a preliminary hearing in September that prison time would be “inappropriate” and that Sergeant Bergdahl was truthful and sincere — while also suggesting he was delusional.

The hearing’s presiding officer, too, has that he not be subject to jail time or punitive discharge, according to defense lawyers. Sarah Koenig, the narrator and an executive producer of the 'Serial' podcast, in her office in State College, Pa., last week. Credit Will Yurman On the first podcast, Sergeant Bergdahl explained his departure from his base just as General Dahl said he had during the investigation: He wanted to create a crisis in order to get an audience with high-level commanders, so he could describe what he saw as leadership problems that could endanger troops. But the sergeant also said he had wanted to demonstrate that he was a stellar soldier. “I was trying to prove to myself, I was trying to prove to the world, to anybody who used to know me, that I was capable of being that person,” he said, adding that in some sense he wanted to emulate someone like Jason Bourne, the espionage movie character. Sergeant Bergdahl’s chief defense lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, said Wednesday: “We have asked from the beginning that everyone withhold judgment on Sergeant Bergdahl’s case until they know the facts.

The ‘Serial’ podcast, like the preliminary hearing conducted in September, is a step in the right direction.” The program’s producers were reluctant to discuss future episodes or to say how many there would be. “Do we have a ‘Jinx’ moment or something like that?” Julie Snyder, an executive producer, said, referring to the dramatic conclusion of the HBO documentary series “The Jinx,” in which the real estate scion Robert A. Durst may have. “No, we’re not holding back on something that the world needs to know.” Photo. Advertisement Mr.

Boal, the writer of “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” said he had begun speaking to Sergeant Bergdahl a few months after the sergeant returned to the United States. Boal planned to make a movie about him. Sergeant Bergdahl was initially skeptical of Mr.

Boal’s Hollywood connection and was not familiar with his movie work, Mr. But after speaking for a couple of months, the two grew more comfortable with each other, and Mr. Boal began recording their conversations for “research purposes.” He recorded 25 hours. “There was never any intention for the tapes being public,” Mr.

This year, though, Mr. Boal and Hugo Lindgren, the president of, a movie and television production company, realized they had a trove of great material in the tapes.

Lindgren, a former editor at The Times, was looking for advice and took them to Ms. Snyder so she could offer an “honest opinion if this stuff was good as audio,” he said. Mark Boal, the screenwriter who interviewed Sergeant Bergdahl, in 2013. Credit Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Mr.

Lindgren said he did not anticipate that the tapes would become part of the “Serial” podcast. Snyder and Ms. Koenig had already begun reporting for a second season. But that story was going to take time — they declined to discuss what it was about — so they listened to the tapes and were intrigued. Koenig said she was initially a “very uneducated consumer of this story. But when I went back and read all the reporting, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ ” Once they were able to get a handle on their own reporting needs, they became confident that the Bergdahl story would work for the second season.

Boal asked Sergeant Bergdahl for permission; he agreed after listening to the first season of “Serial” at Mr. Boal’s request. Advertisement Listeners familiar with “Serial” will find that its catchy theme song has been modified (“We wanted to change it because the theme the first year really belonged to that story,” Ms. Snyder said), and that MailChimp, a sponsor last season that was made semi-famous by its quirky ad insertion, will return, along with a few others.

“We didn’t make much ad revenue off the last season,” Ms. She said future episodes would be about more than just Sergeant Bergdahl and would also shed light on unanswered questions like whether his Taliban captors quickly spirited him over the border into the Pakistani frontier, where they had a haven. “Exactly how long did the search last? What were the consequences of the search? Was this all a search in the name of Bowe?

Was this top cover for stuff that they wanted to be doing, but they already knew Bowe was in Pakistan anyway?” she said. “All of that is super interesting, and we definitely are heading down that path.”.