200 feet of extension cords, is it to much??

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It depends upon the load and what you are trying to accomplish. A fully loaded (20 amperes) 12 ga cord will have around 12% voltage drop at 200 feet. Once you include the wire losses from the panel to the receptacle you're using, you're easily down to 100 volts.

But then again, 100 volts may be fine if your incandescent lights or electric heater still put out enough light or enough heat for your purposes, it's just not very efficient. The run from the panel to the load will dissipate 400 watts before it even gets to the coop.

Less than 9 amps would keep that 200' run at less than 5% loss.
 
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WELL

I'm using a 100ft heavy duty 12 gauge outdoor cord rated down to -58F plus a short 4ft Portable GFCI cord to power a 260watt heated muck bucket. My barn is serviced by 200amps and only has 4 circuits on it.
 
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Absolute newbie to chickens, but and old camper [and used a camper when showing dogs] and an older nurse.

1] agree that one long heavy cord is best - and VERY costly! Consider looking at a camper supply store for a heavy duty cord. It takes a lot of power to run a big camper --it IS a small house with all of the amenities. Even a very expensive cord doesn't cost as much as a generator, not even counting the cost of fuel.

2] If you MUST use more than 1 cord, use as few as will suffice and waterproof the connections. Old nurses trick: cover the connections with "Cling Wrap". It sticks to itself and most other dry surfaces [including human skin
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] with an air-tight, water-tight seal. We nurses use it to keep dressings, IV caths and casts dry during showers/baths. we don't, however let said dressings soak while wrapped, so seal off the wrapped connector with a plastic sleeve sealed at both end and elevate above probable/possible water levels.

Be safe
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edited cause I don't think well this late!
 
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We ALWAYS electrical tape connections and THEN duct tape over that. Elevate is the biggest step I think! We 'tack' ours to the back of any fence we can, OR put t-posts in the ground with electric fence toppers on it and slip your cord in the polyrope part of the topper.
 
We are having an ice storm today. Accidents all over the place. I just had a breaker trip and I don’t know why. I tried to click it back on and it tripped again. Only God knows when this box was put in and I don’t want to start a fire. I think I’m going to just go out and water them 3 times a day. So to be safe I’ll do it the old fashion way, walking and carrying water.

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Now I need to worry about DH getting home.
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Well forget about the breaker, DH made it home and it was the plug in from my fish tank. So that's taken care of and he's home.
 
Quote:
It depends upon the load and what you are trying to accomplish. A fully loaded (20 amperes) 12 ga cord will have around 12% voltage drop at 200 feet. Once you include the wire losses from the panel to the receptacle you're using, you're easily down to 100 volts.

But then again, 100 volts may be fine if your incandescent lights or electric heater still put out enough light or enough heat for your purposes, it's just not very efficient. The run from the panel to the load will dissipate 400 watts before it even gets to the coop.

Less than 9 amps would keep that 200' run at less than 5% loss.

Ok, 120 volts - 12 % = 105.6 volts


120 - 5% = 114volts not that much

The safe thing is to make sure to protect the wire size with proper breaker size!

Most home user dont need to worry about votage drop........
 
So this is what I did. I'm using 2 100ft heavy duty 12 gauge outdoor cords. Where they connect I got an Ziplock plastic container and put the connection together and splite the sides of the container for the cords to go into Then I wrap it with duck tape and sealed it good. Half way was right under the unused corn crib so it's out of the weather. I'm using it for a heat light but I have a timer on it and it comes on at 3:30am and off at 8am. This works really good. My water is not freezing and the chickens are staying warm.
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Thanks everyone for all your help.
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