Electrical advise please

[david.tamlaght]

I have an array of different chargers for my cordless gear that i need to use many evening when i get home.
I bought a 4 gang extension lead ,fixed it to the wall to create a charging station in the workshop but it came into my head that running 4 chargers of an extension lead from a single 13 amp socket may not be the best idea for safety and possible overload of the socket.
The chargers are mostly 18v. 2 hitachi ,1 makita,i bosch and also a couple of work lights that i use on a regular basis
Any advise welcome .

 

[jimbob01]

if its just battery tool chargers they normally have quite a small draw on the 240 supply... I have a watt meter on board and an 18v 5ah Makita battery barely shows as a draw... probably around 100w (18x5=90) .. my personal rule of thumb is to add up the watts that each device uses and allow an extra 10 percent on top ... big halogen lights can draw 500w or more but the led ones are a small fraction of that ;-)

 

[robgul]

You'll be fine - I have a 6 outlet block and even with all the chargers (3 x Einhell, 1 x Ferrex, 2 x Bosch) running the draw is negligible

 

[Spectric]

Providing it is a decent extension lead then you will have no issues, these chargers draw little power and once the battery is charged they switch off. The size of the cable indicates how little power they consume and my Makita charger only has a 5 amp fuse in the plug.

 

[ChaiLatte]

...I have a watt meter on board and an 18v 5ah Makita battery barely shows as a draw... probably around 100w...

The Makita DC18RC charger says 240w max. draw on its label. So it is good that your 'in use' figure shows how conservative the manufacturer is.

If we took the 240w as a typical figure, and assumed the supply voltage was 220v, the 13A socket would accommodate between 11 and 12 chargers at its limit.

Very rough rule of thumb would seem to be 1 amp per charger, with a more precise calculation needed if applying the rough rule gives an answer more than 70% of supply capacity.

 

[david.tamlaght]

thanks for all the advice.safe enough it seems .
electric is not my favourite subject and always wary of overload