Salem

I am wondering how far is the blast radius of malfunctioning alchemy equipment.. How far away should I build my alchemy hovel so that my home does not get blown up.

The chance of an entire building being destroyed is very low. You would have to be incredibly lucky, or unlucky. I've never even had the stove explode so I can't speak on the max range but I doubt a neighboring house would be affected.

I 've never seen proof myself of exploding houses (but I haven't dabbled with pressure cookers yet). As for test tubes (with which I have performed significant alchemy on roanoke, yay turkeys), I can say that the chance to blow up the alchemy table is exceedingly small: i've lost dozens of test tubes over that time, but not a single table.

When my townhouse blew up it didn't damage anything around it.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the more unstable something is when it blows the more damage it does? So you would have to have been lucky enough to get something so unstable without it blowing to start with.

I don't think it can damage anything outside, because the actual explosion happens on a completely different map (the house won't explode until you actually load the inside by entering).

Awesome, Great news thanks gentlemen.. (and I am quite glad the investment I will make is not going to bring my base crumbling around me)

Do note the word "think", it's just an untested hypothesis of mine.