Power Strip Safety

The holidays are coming up and we'll be using few of these while we decorate our living rooms with twinkle lights, light up our mini-villages, Nativity Scenes and Menorah's. We should be aware that even though these outlet-a-plenty little guys are handy, we need to checking them for safety. The outlets need to grasp incoming plugs well, the plug itself needs to be checked for integrity and all three prongs and the switches need to be in good working snappy, lighted order. Speaking of which, I just replaced a switch on an old metal power strip from The Shack that had a wonky switch.

You know what I mean. You have that 6 outlet power strip with the finicky switch. It still works as long as you get the switch "just right"? Once I had the switch replaced and confirmed the new one put my power strip back in good working order, I decided to take the old switch apart to see what happened. What I found was a house fire waiting to happen.

The plastic part that was made to pivot the switch had gotten brittle and snapped. This left the switch's contact point rattling around inside the switches casing. The contact points were arching to make connection. Causing heat. Enough to do this to the bulb and connection piece of plastic:

This is dangerous. How much are power strips these days? $20-$30? Toss out the ones that have ANY questionable issues and buy another one. It will be a small price to pay instead of losing everything including the possibility of your life.

-Birdsall