Extension Boards and Plug Safety: What Not to Do

1. Never plug a heating appliance into an extension board

This is the whole rule, and it prevents most extension board fires on its own. Anything that makes heat or drives a big motor draws far more current than a general-purpose board and its thin flex are built for.

• Never on a board: room heater or blower, water geyser, iron, induction cooktop, electric kettle, microwave, oven, air conditioner, washing machine, water motor.
• Fine on a board: phone and laptop chargers, router, television, lamp, table fan, printer.
• The winter trap. Room heaters and blowers get bought during a Delhi cold snap and plugged into whatever socket is nearest, which is usually a board already carrying five other things. That combination is the single commonest way these fires start.
• Heating appliances belong in a proper wall socket, on their own, plugged in directly.

If there is no wall socket where you need one, the answer is another socket, not a longer board. See what adding or replacing a socket involves.

2. Do not plug one board into another

Chaining boards together, or plugging a board into a multi-plug adapter, concentrates everything onto one wall socket that was never intended to feed all of it. The socket, its plug and the thin flex in between become the weak point, and they are the parts that heat up.

• One board per wall socket. Never a board into a board, and never a board into a travel adapter or a three-pin-to-two-pin converter.
• Do not run a board under a carpet, a mattress or a rug. Heat cannot escape and the flex gets crushed by feet and furniture.
• Do not coil a long board tightly while it is in use with a heavy load. Coiled cable traps heat.
• Do not run boards through doorways or across balcony thresholds where the flex gets pinched or rained on. Monsoon water and an extension board are a bad combination.

3. Learn the warning signs, and check monthly

Boards give plenty of warning before they fail. Nobody looks. Take thirty seconds once a month and feel the plugs and boards around the flat with the back of your hand.

• Warm or hot plug or socket. A plug should be cool or barely warm. Warmth means resistance, and resistance means a connection that is deteriorating. Stop using it.
• Any smell of hot plastic. Unplug immediately and do not use that board again.
• Discolouration. Brown, yellow or black marks around a socket hole or on a plug pin. That is heat damage that has already happened.
• A loose fit. If a plug wobbles or falls out, the contact inside has lost its grip and will arc. Replace the board.
• Buzzing, crackling or flickering when something is plugged in or the flex is moved.
• A damaged or taped flex. Tape is not a repair. Replace it.

4. Buy properly, and think about two-pin sockets

Boards vary enormously, and the cheap ones are cheap in exactly the places that matter: the contacts inside, the thickness of the flex and the quality of the plug.

• Buy a board with a marked current rating and a real brand behind it, from a proper shop rather than a street stall. An unmarked board tells you nothing about what it can carry.
• Prefer one with its own switch and a fuse or a small breaker, and with thick flex rather than thin.
• Use the three-pin socket, earth pin included. Never file down or snap off an earth pin to make a plug fit, and avoid converters that turn a three-pin plug into a two-pin one. The earth pin is what keeps a metal-bodied appliance from becoming live.
• Two-pin sockets in older Delhi flats have no earth at all. Nothing with a metal body should be run from one. If your flat is full of them, that is worth fixing properly — see the electrical upgrades worth doing.
• If a board keeps tripping the circuit, it is telling you something. Read why an MCB keeps tripping rather than moving the load to a different board.

If anyone in the house has felt a tingle from an appliance or a metal surface, stop and treat it as urgent: a shock from a tap or appliance means the earthing is not doing its job. More everyday habits are in our home electrical safety tips.