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A power strip is handy, but it is not the right home for every appliance. No matter the season, safe electrical habits keep your house protected, and that gets harder when your household needs more outlets than the walls were built with.
Power strips were made to fill that gap, but not every use is a safe one. A handful of common household items should never go on a power strip, because overloading one can make it overheat or spark and start a fire. If your home is short on outlets, the better fix is to add more rather than stretch a strip past its limits. As you look over how you use electricity at home, keep these five items off your power strips.
Because a slow cooker only comes out now and then, it is tempting to plug it into a power strip to keep your counter setup tidy. Avoid it. A slow cooker runs for hours at a time, and that long, steady draw can overheat a power strip and start a fire while it works.
Depending on your kitchen layout, plugging the microwave into a power strip might feel necessary. Do not do it. A power strip cannot deliver the power a standard microwave needs, and it can fail without warning, putting both the appliance and your kitchen at risk.
A coffee maker is the morning's best friend, but it is no friend to a power strip. Most pull a high amount of energy to heat water quickly, so a coffee maker belongs in a wall outlet where it has the power to do its job.
A sump pump plays a key role in keeping your basement dry when water threatens. But it cannot help you if the power strip it is plugged into gets wet as the basement floods. Plug a sump pump into a proper GFCI outlet mounted on the wall, well above the level where water would reach.
Power strips are not built to connect to one another to stretch your outlets across a room. This daisy-chaining can quickly overload a circuit, which is why it is banned under most residential fire codes. If you keep running short on outlets, that is a sign to have an electrician check the circuit or add a dedicated outlet rather than chain strips together. For longer reach, use a properly rated extension cord instead.
The simplest way to avoid this kind of electrical damage is to keep these appliances off your power strips altogether. If you still have questions about what is safe to plug in, send us a message. And when you need an electrical pro for anything around the house, Williams Energy is the place to call.
Power strips are fine for low-draw electronics like lamps, phone chargers, computers, routers, and TVs. The trouble starts with high-wattage appliances that heat, cool, or run a motor, which pull far more current than a strip is built to handle.
Appliances like microwaves, coffee makers, and space heaters draw more current than a typical power strip is rated for. That can make the strip overheat, melt, or spark, which is a real fire risk. These belong in their own wall outlet.
Yes. Plugging one power strip into another, known as daisy-chaining, overloads the circuit and is prohibited under most residential fire codes. If you are short on outlets, the safe fix is a properly rated extension cord or a new outlet installed by an electrician.
