Is my crawl space heater dangerous and expensive?
You didn’t say where you live; however, I lived in North Pole, Alaska (it’s about 10 miles south of Fairbanks, AK) for nearly 20 years. All of my houses had crawl spaces just as you describe. Not once did I have a heater in them. Even when the temperatures outside hit 60 below zero the crawl space stayed about 40 degrees. Never had a pipe freeze, never did I have any cold related problems in my crawl spaces. So, with that in mind, I would say your wasting electricity keeping that electric heater running. Plus, in my opinion, it’s dangerous to have an electric heater running all the time in an unfrequented space. As far as inspections are concerned, contact your local fire department and ask them to send somebody out to look at it. They’ll do it for free. If they feel it’s a hazard, they will tell the landlord to stop using it. At that point, he will have no choice but to stop using it, or face a heavy fine.
