Office buildings and other commercial structures have to reach a level of fire safety. They’re checked all the time by health & safety inspectors, ensuring all the right things are in place to a) prevent fires and b) protect people if a fire does happen.
Things aren’t as strict when we step into the home. Sure, your house will be checked if you want to sell it, but until that point, you’re left to fend for yourself. You won’t be fined for having poor fire safety throughout your property, which means most of us neglect it. Oh, a fire is never going to happen, so why bother thinking about it?
Without wanting to scare you, a fire can happen at any given moment. It could come from excess heat outside causing a nearby tree to combust that touches your house and sets it alight. In this day and age, electrical fires are exceedingly common too. That’s why we need systems and ideas in place to improve fire safety at home, preventing tragedies and keeping our families safe. Here are three simple ideas to implement:
Install Working Smoke Alarms
Every house needs working smoke alarms to detect the early warning signs of a fire. Is it annoying when they go off while you’re cooking because you slightly overcooked something on the hob? Yes, but it’s a small price to pay for your family’s safety. You never know when this alarm can save a life and alert you to a fire before it starts spreading.
Have Some Sort Of Fire Suppressant
Unless you live in rented accommodation, you likely don’t have any fire suppressants in your home. Consider buying a fire blanket or a fire extinguisher to suppress any small fires that might arise. Both are particularly useful during BBQ season!
Additionally, you may want to go one step further and install a sprinkler system with a fire fighting pump. These are commonplace in commercial buildings and the sprinklers detect a fire and turn on to suppress it. Having sprinklers in the kitchen or in a room where you keep lots of valuables/heirlooms could be a smart idea.
Don’t Overload Electrical Sockets
Apparently, 25% of house fires are caused by electrical faults. That’s a crazy statistic, but it shows how dangerous your electronics can be. One of the big problems is when you overload electrical sockets. Too many things are plugged into one or two sockets and the electrical current gets overloaded and causes a spark that turns into a fire.
Avoid this by doing a couple of things:
- Get an electrician to check all sockets to be sure they’re still good. Old ones can be overloaded a lot easier and you may need to install modern ones to prevent this.
- Don’t plug multiple extension leads into a wall socket. One extension is enough – when you start adding an extension lead to an extension lead, that’s where trouble starts.
Be mindful of these ideas as they will help you prevent fires and be better prepared to deal with any freak fires around your home. It might sound insane to worry about this, but when you start having kids and raising a family, you realise how important it is to protect them at all costs.
