No real update, but I did take apart the space heater that failed last night. It looks like the wire that feeds the heating element literally burned up. I see a couple of possible root causes: the crimp was bad/defective and the wires fell out, causing arcing. Alternatively, the design of the unit did not take into account possible power loss and was designed/built too cheaply, meaning every time it lost power, the unit was unable to dissipate the heat from the heating element, it slowly melted away the wire insulation and all that and eventually the cheapo crimp connector broke from the constant heating and cooling. It is worth noting that it looks like they used pretty typical wire (undersized in my opinion) which is not rated for the temperature that the heating element surface will reach in standard operation. It is also worth noting that I have this on a temperature controlled outlet, so it effectively suffers a power loss 50 times a day or so.
While this is repairable, and fairly easily too (just crimp a new end on it) I definitely wouldn't trust it to heat the house at this point. Since I plan to buy another backup for the house, I am not sure I have need of a space heater I don't trust and wouldn't use in the house. If anyone wants it, I will happily fix it for them.
I haven't heard back from anyone yet, so I will start pushing buttons on the house stuff today.
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