Just a reminder...

[havasu]

As temperatures continue to drop, here’s a quick reminder. Please do NOT plug space heaters into extension cords or power strips!

Plug them directly into the wall outlet!

Extension cords/ Power strips are not able to handle the high current flow that a space heater can draw and can overheat causing a fire.

 

[Eddie_T]

Here I sit with a quartz tower operating on a 16 AWG ext cord plugged into a power strip. However I do have the ext cord modified to insert a series voltage controller that throttles the quartz heater at an approximate 700 watts continuous draw.

 

[bud16415]

The reminder is great.



We just had a friend burn his mobile home to the ground killing his two dogs inside. He was fortunate to not be home at the time. It was started by an extension cord he had plugged into freezer. The cord was likely undersized and ran down a hall way where it was walked on.



My nephews house we built him is about 100 yards away but the wind was right as this mobile home burned the smoke came to my nephews house. They had to leave their house for 2 days because whatever the mobile home was made out of really put out some bad toxic smoke.



Likewise this year and with the price of energy going out of sight lots of people are rigging up heat sources here. Old stove pipes are being fired back up. I had one guy tell me he’s heating his house by burning cardboard. I just shock my head as I can see that going bad quite a few ways. Not to mention where is he keeping all this free cardboard dry to burn.



Please all be safe and spread the word.

 

[Eddie_T]

ANother thing to do for electric space heaters is to check the plug into the receptacle to see if it's overly warm. I had a receptacle fail fortunately I discovered it because it had lost tension and the plug fell out. A 15A receptacle carrying a constant 12.5A for a 1500W heater could be a problem.