What You Need to Know about Using Power Strips
- First, if you find you are relying very heavily on power strips, your home needs additional circuits and wall outlets installed by a professional electrician—not more power strips. Circuits in your electrical panel are designed to accommodate a fixed number of outlets and amperage. Excessively multiplying those demands by overuse of power strips can cause a hazardous electrical overload.
- Use power strips only to accommodate multiple low-power loads like computers, audio and video equipment or individual room lighting. Power strips are not designed to handle the heavy current draw imposed by refrigerators, space heaters, toaster ovens, fans or many power tools. Use with these devices could overheat the strip and cause a fire hazard.
- Multiple strips should never be “daisy chained” together — one power strip plugged into another to create still more outlets. This can dangerously overload the wall outlet the strip is plugged into.
- Before purchasing any power strip, make sure it carries a certification from a recognized safety testing facility such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) or ETL. Many cheap strips flooding the market now do not.
- Unless a strip specifically states that it also incorporates surge suppression circuitry, it probably doesn’t. Don’t rely on power strips to protect electrical devices from power surges.
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