Air Compressor + Extension Cord = ?

[Jimmy_EC5W]

I just bought a relatively cheap air compressor today, and I was going through the owners manual and it mentioned that you should get a longer air hose rather than use an extension cord to extend your "position of work" or whatever. It was somewhere along the lines of "The air compressor may loose voltage through an extension cord and may do damage or not work correctly" etc etc..

Does anyone here have advice they can spare, or maybe even opinions?

I have heard it can have some effect but how much, and is it unsafe to use an extension cord?

P.S its a 2.5hp Compressor.

 

[Guest]

I use an extension cord all the time and I'm using one of the cheapest cords Bunnings had, but it's only 5m in length. The cord doesn't heat up or anything running and the 2.5hp 50L compressor runs perfectly.

If you are worried then choose a heavier duty lead and no longer than the length you need to run to the compressor. Because sometimes they can feel a bit warm if constantly drawing high current through them. But compressors don't (usually) constantly run, only switching on for a few mins at a time, so they should be fine.

When you get to the bigger compressors than ours, they are usually 15amp and you would need a 15amp extension lead too in that case. But you would know then as they have a different earth pin and won't plug into normal household 10amp sockets. You'd need to get a sparky to put a special 15amp socket into your garage with 15amp wiring back to the meter box.

 

[kiwibstokes]

As a carpenter i'm always running my compressor off extension leads, i have a good quality compressor tho with a fairly robust motor, a cheaper one you might have issues with the motor burning out eventually running off a lead. You do lose amps over leads and sometimes when they get really low it can't even crank the motor over. However i do use the best lead available from bunnings for the compressor which is a 15amp lead with 10amp plugs and at about $55 bucks for 30m, those 20$ red and yellow 25m cheapies from bunning just go pop or burn out often

 

[bradc]

You can lose a small amount of voltage through the lead but I can't imagine it would be much, maybe a MAX of 5 volts.

 

[Jimmy_EC5W]

Wicked. I bought a slightly longer hose anyway. $10 from bunnings for 10m.

Better than Supercheap - cheapest was $39 for 10m, even with team member discount it still would of been too much for me.. lol

Thanks for all your advice!