Only you can prevent dehumidifier fires…
Over the summer I moved into a rental house, which while more modern and hopefully a little less drafty than my previous “cottage on the hill”, is unfortunately completely stocked with two-prong outlets. I’ve had to invest in a not-insubstantial amount of those chinsy three-prong to two-prong adapters that just never fit in the outlet quite right because the metal tab for the screw is always 3mm longer than it should be. In the basement, I have a rather innocent looking dehumidifier that runs occasionally to empty the basement of the odd high tide; and wouldn’t you know it’s a three-pronger and there’s not a three-prong outlet to be found! Well, except for that lone one on the bare bulb in the far back corner. Hmm…
Let me be quite honest. I have zero experience with and zero knowledge of dehumidifiers. I am far more familiar with the hardly-use-any-electricity-at-all-and-provides-exactly-the-opposite-in-functionality humidifier. I incorrectly assumed that the electrical draw of both appliances would be pretty much the same. Little did I know that my setup of plugging a dehumidifier into a light-socket was the equivalent of plugging an air conditioner into the end of a set of indoor Christmas lights.
On one particularly damp day, the dehumidifier worked extra hard to keep the puddles from forming on the basement floor and succeeded in lowering the humidity to between 8 and 9 on the dial. 8 being the Mojave desert and 9 being the Sahara. With the subterranean desertification project nearly complete and the electrical draw at a maximum, the only three-prong outlet in my whole basement cashed in its chips with a sparking, arcing fiesta into the dry rafters that I could only begin to describe as like watching an over-caffeinated Bear Grylls trying to start a fire in a Libyan match factory factory with flint and steel.
Thankfully, a fire didn’t actually start. To be honest, I didn’t even plug the dehumidifier into that outlet – it was like that when I moved in. I just stumbled upon some charcoal marks one day while I was investigating why a freshwater lake was beginning to encroach on my washer and dryer.
I’m sure there are other people in the world running similarly dangerous setups in their own basements. YOU may be one of these people. Never mind if your house burns down because of it – how on earth would you feel if you burned up the only honest-to-god three-prong outlet in your whole basement? Now that hurts. A three-prong outlet is a terrible thing to waste.
I would know.