(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!!!