On 1/24/14, 12:18 PM, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:05:06 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

(Preface) This morning I decided to do a little woodworking in my garage that is attached to the house but only connected to the house on one side wall. At -6F outside and 32.5F in the garage this morning when I got up, I decided to preheat the garage to get it a few degrees above freezing. I pulled out my trusty 1300 watt fan-helped floor electric heater, plugged it in and went about doing somwe other garage chores, and then did my woodworking.

When I was done, about 2 hours later, I turned off and unplugged the heater. To my surprise, the plug was warm, not hot, but definitely warm to the touch. I took a closer look and realized that the prongs of the plug were badly tarnished/corroded. An even closer look showed that the insulation on the power cord itself was badly cracked and fallling off(from overheating maybe) for the first inch or so where it comes out of the plug.

Needless to say, I was thankful that nothing bad had happened. I could have gotten a shock from the power cord before the GFI for the garage circuits kicked out, or even a small fire if the cord had ignited some stray sawhust laying around. I am normally quite safety sensitive, so this was a wake-up call to think about safety a little more than I have apparently been doing lately!!!

I have an electric space heater for my garage. Had a ext. cord heat,
like in your experience.

Reading the other day that ext. cords are NOT recommended for these
space heaters.


Agreed... extension cords really should be avoided where high currents
will be involved, but if one must be used, be sure it's rated to carry
the required amperage or more... another often overlooked 'week link' is
outlets that don't firmly grab plugs. The cords female outlet is equally
important. It should take a little doing to push the plug in...

Have a neighbor & his wife told me of waking one night to the smell of
burning plastic/rubber. They'd plugged an electric space heater into one
of those mickey mouse plastic .99¢ store switched outlet strips... it
was a high resistance (poorly crimped) terminal within the strip that
had started burning. They were lucky too, but their house reeked for eons.

Glad you only had minimal damage...

Erik