How to Keep Your Home Safe from Fire

Fire safety is extremely important absolutely anywhere and everywhere. No matter where you go, there must always be fire safety precautions in place and solutions in the event of a fire happening. However, in your own home it is slightly different, as this is solely your responsibility. You are in charge of ensuring that you have the right facilities to keep your home safe from fire, and making sure that you are minimising the risk of any fires starting at all. 

Here are a few ways to keep your home safe from fire…

Always have a functioning smoke alarm

Having a smoke alarm fitted in your house, and in fact, in every room of the house, is essential in keeping your home safe. Smoke alarms are there to detect smoke and fire and alert you of this immediately so that you can get to safety. Furthermore, even if you have smoke alarms fitted, you should always be conscious of getting these checked and batteries replaced when necessary so that they are working properly and doing their job.

There is no excuse for not having a smoke alarm. They are cheap to install and could be potentially life saving. If not in every room, you should at least have one on each level of your house so that smoke can be detected as early as possible. It is recommended that you regularly test smoke alarms to ensure that they are working.

Have a fire extinguisher handy

We advise that you have at least one fire extinguisher in your home. You can get small ones that are house-friendly and don’t take up too much space. They are good to have because if a small fire starts, they allow you to put this out immediately and get it under control. As well as this, houses tend to face a significant amount of fires that are caused by electrical appliances, and so of course using water to try and stop this is extremely dangerous and will make matters worse. A fire extinguisher is safe to use on any kind of fire.

Fire blankets in the kitchen

Kitchens are often the place where a lot of house fires start. This is due to the appliances used in there, and if they happen to be used incorrectly or not safely. Therefore, having a fire blanket handy is something that we strongly advise. With a fire blanket, you can extinguish small fires almost immediately. Furthermore, they are safe to us for any type of fire, gas or electrical. They are made up of materials that cut off oxygen supply so that the fire cannot spread and is put out straight away.

Inspect heating sources

Any heating sources in the house can be a factor in the cause of fires, due to the heat transmitted and the exposure. The best way you can prevent any sort of dangers regarding this is to have any heating sources inside your home inspected. We would recommend that you have a professional come and inspect them at least once a year so that you’re staying on top of things and alert of anything unusual or that is posing a threat.

Don’t leave cooking appliances unattended

As we briefly mentioned, the kitchen is the one room in the house where most fires are started. This is due to the cooking appliances and gas and electricals in there. The best way to stay safe and keep yourself and your home protected, is to not leave cooking appliances unattended when preparing food. Furthermore, if you are still in the house but leave to go in another room, you should keep checking back regularly to make sure everything is okay. If cooking appliances are being used and left unattended, this could lead to a fire, and it means that you wouldn’t be there to put it out and stop it from spreading.

Be responsible

Although this is quite broad, being responsible is the best way to keep your home safe from fire. It basically means staying on top of all the things we have mentioned above. Being aware of any fire risks in your home and making sure that these aren’t potentially going to cause danger is the best way you can reduce any chance of fires starting. Furthermore, if a fire was to start, being responsible would mean having things in place, such as smoke alarms and fire extinguishers so that you could get to safety as soon as possible, or put a small fire out yourself if you were capable of doing so. 

For more information and advice about keeping your home safe from fire, simply get in touch with us via our contact page and we will be more than happy to help.