TAKE ACTION ON FIRE PREVENTION
Make sure your smoke alarms work and get a pro to check your wiring
It’s that time of year again — no, not fall or Thanksgiving. I’m talking about Fire Prevention Week, which runs Oct. 4-10.
Every year, Fire Prevention Week falls on the week of Oct. 9 to commemorate the Great Chicago Fire, which, unfortunately, took the lives of more than 250 people and left another 100,000 homeless. It’s a reminder to all of us that a house fire can happen to anyone, so we must take the proper steps to prevent it, and then keep our families safe in case it does.
Proper homebuilding has a lot to do with fire prevention.
For example, we have firewalls to help stop flames from spreading between semi-detached and townhouses; you can only have a certain amount of glass on either side of your house, depending on how close it is to the property line. Again, this is to help stop the spread of flames.
We also have fire-resistant insulation (which I recommend installing on all your exterior walls) and fire-resistant intumescent paint that can be applied to sheathing and framing. Will it stop a fire from starting? Maybe not, but it will give you more time to escape with your life and minimize damage to your home.
But as a homeowner, you have to keep on top of things, too.
The No. 1 priority: You must have working smoke alarms on every level of your home, inside bedrooms and outside sleeping areas. (About a quarter of all house fires start in the bedroom.) And test them! You should be testing your smoke alarms every month — no exceptions — and changing the batteries twice a year. I do it when we change our clocks because it’s easy to remember.
I’ve heard of some people who actually remove the batteries from their smoke alarms or disconnect them — this is a big, big no-no. In one case, a few days after a family disabled their alarms (because they kept going off) a fire broke out in the home and unfortunately the couple lost their son who was only three years old. I’m sure that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Smoke alarms save lives. It’s that simple. In fact, they can cut the risk of dying in a house fire by about half — that’s huge!
But when was the last time you had a licensed electrical contractor come and take a look at your home’s wiring?
Electrical fires are more common than you think. And now with winter approaching, we’ll be using our heating systems and lighting more.
You have to make sure your home’s electrical can safely handle the extra load, because it’s way too easy for bad wiring to cause an electrical fire. In fact, most home fires are caused by poorly maintained electrical and heating/cooling systems. So get them checked by the right pros!
You should be getting your home’s electrical checked at least every four years, and if you bought a house that’s 15 years old, or older, you should bring in a licensed electrical contractor as soon as possible, especially if the basement is finished. Too many homeowners think they can do their own electrical, and unfortunately many of them do. How do you know if everything is up to code? If there’s knob and tube wiring? Or aluminum wiring mixed with copper? Or if the person who did the work knew what they were doing?
Get a licensed electrical contractor to come in to do an audit of the entire house. They’ll make sure all the electrical work is up to code and that all the connections are tight.
Fire prevention is not something that you can put off, or that you can get around to doing when you have the time. Because the truth is we don’t know when a fire can start in a home, and sometimes it’s too late.
Keep safe, make it right and please, folks, make sure all of your smoke alarms are working ... today!