another fire strikes one of our own

This has always been my only fear in keeping these animals . I check EVERYTHING every weekend and still feel im not doing enough. Such a horrible tragedy. I could not imagine loosing my animals and my home.

My heart goes out to Grant and his family :(

If you are going to do your own wiring with solder, one thing to look out for with power cords you're cutting up are chinese counterfeit power cords.

Over the last few years with copper prices being as high as they have been the Chinese have been copper coating steel in making power cords. You can tell if you have this because the color won't be quite right & it won't oxidate the way copper wire normally does, but more importantly the resistance of the wire will be off the chart for what it should be. That means they'll run hotter and be a bigger fire hazard, and may also pose voltage drop problems. They're even faking UL labels on some of their junk that they send over here. If you're cutting an ac cord off an old electrical device you're throwing out [I save every ac cord that I see heading to the garbage] its not something to worry about since this is a new problem that hasn't gotten a lot of press.