How many power strips can I string together before it gets dangerous?

Question

I have an old house with very few outlets, and with my computer, monitor, printer, phone, answering machine, tv, and DVD player, I have to use power strips. I currently (no pun intended) have one plugged into another and the second plugged into the wall. Can I add one more or will I overload the outlet?

Asking a question BEFORE I do something dangerous makes me a knucklehead? Thanks, buddy.

I should have explained--each strip has only 3 items plugged in due to the size of those huge power plug things they put on electronics these days.

Answer 1

most appliances are amp rated ... if total amp draw is close to the max it can heat things up and gets dangerous ... ur power strip is amp rated also ... the devices plugged into it should have a total amp draw well under the strips rating ... so if its rated at 10 i wouldnt go over 8 ... and the outlet is prolly 15 or so ... so keep ur total device amp draw under the limits .. just read them all and add them up ...

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

Check the rated wattage of BOTH the power strips and the outlet that you are plugged into . Then determine the total wattage that you plan to draw through the outlet and the power strips if it is less than the ratings of the outlet and the power strips then you are OK if not then find more outlets.

Answer 4

power cords are not meant to be plugged into one another. You should only have 2 power strips. One each plugged into each of the walls electrical socket.
Good thing you asked, because people who dont know usually come home to a burnt up house and nothing left.

Answer 5

Does your home have aluminum wiring? If it does then only one power strip per outlet or you may melt your electriacl wiring and burnyour house down. Get an electrician to come inspect the wiring you have to determine what is or is not a safe pratice with the wiring you have. it sounds to me like you have an older home that cannot handle todays high amp devices homes from as recently as the 60's may have been built with aluminum wiring.
Aluminum wiring is currently illegal for safety reasons.

If you have aluminum wiring it may not be legal for you to live in that building and may get the place condemned because of the illegal wiring. Get it checked for your own safety.

Answer 6

As long as you don't try to add a microwave or something it should be fine. Most outlets are rated at 20 amps and a computer system won't draw near that.

Answer 7

yes this is dangerous only use the strip for its own amout every strip says how much jouls it can hold use this to calculate how much voltage it can hold so this means you can have one strip pluged in to another but the one that goes in the wall needs to be the one the holds the most jouls. some can hold 3000 jouls and at that rate you can have just about four strips pluged into that one strip.

Answer 8

Don't string them. It all depends on the total amps that you're pulling. Computers do not use a lot of power, contrary to what you might think. But just dont string them

Answer 9

yeah its not how many you actually string together, its what you actually put there... you can probably have 50 alarm clocks plugged into one outlet somehow, but you can't do that with electrical heaters for example... just use common sense about what you're connecting to it...

Answer 10

Knucklehead! (no offense) you want to burn your house down? then go right ahead. otherwise you need to have an electrician come out and add some more outlets. (about $150 each)