Over at Wirecutter, I have some handy advice for how to live safely with a space heater. Which is to say, don’t do what I did:
It was the winter of 2019, and I was down in my unfinished basement putting the finishing touches on my band’s next album. I had to get through only a few more guitar overdubs, but my fingers were too cold to play the parts quite right. So I grabbed a space heater I was long-term testing for Wirecutter. I placed it down on top of the wooden workbench where my digital audio workstation was set up and plugged it into the nearest power strip, which just so happened to be the same one through which I ran my half-stack Marshall amplifier.
I turned the heater on. Five seconds later, the power strip blew up.
This might not have been the single dumbest thing I’d ever done in my life. But as I watched the sparks fade from the smoldering lump of freshly burnt plastic before me, I knew it was up there on the list.
There was one commenter who very much did not enjoy this self-deprecating anecdote. But there is more to the article than that, including some (hopefully) useful and relatable tips for keeping warm in the winter without risking your life and/or destroying everything you own. This is especially helpful if you, like me, live in the Northeast of the United States, which has been suffering through a nasty cold front lately. I’ve spent a lot of time living with a lot of different space heaters lately, and while I always knew they were supposed to be dangerous, I never realized how dangerous they could really be.
Also: testing space heaters in your home in the middle of August is no fun for anyone. On that, you can definitely trust me.
How not to burn your house down with a space heater [Thom Dunn/Wirecutter]