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Consumer Reports magazine: February 2012

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Space Heaters

Shred it
Paperwork from even closed accounts should be safely destroyed.

My parents died years ago. All their financial accounts have been closed, but I have boxes of their records. Must I shred them? Is ID theft even an issue?

Margaret Parkhurst Los Angeles

Thieves have stolen IDs of the dead, but your biggest risk is that there might be something in those boxes about you: beneficiary information, say, from life insurance policies. Shred the documents or pay a reputable company to do it for you.

We'd like to buy a TV for our unheated summer cottage. But we get winter temperatures around -40° C (-40° to -50° F). Would it hurt to leave a 55-inch LCD TV there?

Bruce and Irene Dearlove Winnipeg, Manitoba

Brrrr! We wouldn't recommend it. Specs we've checked for various manufacturers give a minimum TV storage temperature of -40° F.

The frozen fish fillets I buy are individually wrapped in plastic. Some instructions say the wrapper should be removed before defrosting. How important is this?

David Gersh Houston

Follow the instructions. But if there are none, it depends on how you defrost the fish. If you use your microwave, remove the plastic because it might not be designed for heat and could melt, leach plastic into the food, or give off-flavors to the fish. If you defrost in your refrigerator, safety is probably not a concern, though the wrapping may hinder thawing.

You say never to put a space heater in a child's room. What's the best way to heat a cold bedroom without roasting the entire house?

Nathan Maxwell Leavenworth, KS

Sounds like your heat distribution system needs rebalancing. If you have a ducted forced-air system, adjust dampers so that you're getting more hot air to cold rooms and less air to warm rooms. If that doesn't work, call a professional. For hot water and steam systems, adjust baseboards or radiators in warm rooms, and make sure there's adequate hot water or steam flow in cold rooms. The fix might mean adding radiators. No matter your type of heat, if you have several cold rooms, you might need to move the thermostat and/or zone the heating system to better balance temperatures.

Why wasn't the Toyota Camry in your latest report on predicted reliability?

Ivan Gilland Charlotte, NC

Our December report featured those 2012 vehicles that weren't extensively refreshed (as the Camry was) and for which we had adequate reader survey data. For more on the Camry, see Family sedans.

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