Posted by:
willstill
at Mon Oct 3 07:53:07 2011 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by willstill ]
Hi,
The two major things that I would suggest are:
1.Don't ever sandwich heating pads/mats/tapes between surfaces without allowing air exchange. I buy those 3/4" rubber feet from HD and screw or glue them to the bottoms of all of my cages. This practice doesn't allow heat to build up between combustable or meltable surfaces.
2. Don't overload plugs. We are all guilty of adding loads to our plugs with extension cords as our collections grow, but it is a very dangerous practice. When I built my snake shack, I used heavy duty 20 amp plugs and used four outlets per box. That way, I never have to scab extension cords together and the plugs never get overloaded (hot) even with relatively big room heating devices such as oil radiators. If you can't add outlets, I would at least replace the receptacles with heavy duty ones, or better yet ground fault interuptors (GFIs) that will kill the power in the event of an overload. Replacing outlets is easy to do - black wire (or red if the house is older)to gold screw(hot), white wire to silver screw (neutral) and green wire to green screw (ground). Just remember to turn off the breaker first or you'll get zapped. Good luck.
Will
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RE: Fire Safety help? - willstill, Mon Oct 3 07:53:07 2011