Change of Address: 25 Tips to Protect Your New Home from Fires

25 Tips to Protect Your New Home from Fires

As you move into a new home and go through the normal phases of excitement and exhaustion, one thing to consider pretty quickly is your fire safety plan for the new home. What will you do in the event of a fire, are you prepared? We put together a collection of simple tips that will help you protect your family and your new home.

Quick Guides

Here is a collection of 10 really useful guides with some simple instructions on fire safety.

Firewise Landscaping and Construction Checklist: Here is a quick guide to help you make sure that your landscaping and construction plans don’t yield a potential fire hazard..
Interactive Fireproof Guide: CBS put together this really great interactive map that will help you protect all areas of your new home.
How to Minimize Fire Hazards Caused By Smoking: It may seem obvious but smoking is the cause of a lot of home fires and here are some simple tips for smokers.
Upgrading a Dryer Vent: Dryer vents can get clogged and usually with highly flammable materials, upgrading your dryer vent and good maintenance are really required.
How to Prevent Kitchen Fires: Here are some very simple steps to avoid accidental fires while you are working in the kitchen.
Fireproof Your Landscape: Here you get some advice on which plants are more flammable than others so you can plan your landscape accordingly.
How to Fireproof Your Home the Easy Way: I love easy guides like this, we all want a safe home but sometimes we need the steps spelled out in a simpler way like this guide does.
How to Check for Electrical Fire Hazards: Electrical fires are very common and usually due to not performing simple checkups on your home, this guide identifies those for you.
Fire Proof Paints: If you are painting your new home, why not use fire proof paint to further protect your new house and everyone and everything in it.
Winter Survival Guide: Fireproof Your Home: From space heaters to other ways of keeping the house warm, these tips are useful.

Actions To Contain Fires

Here are 10 simple tips to try and contain fires.

Remove Debris: Sometimes we find ourselves collecting things that are flammable like leaves (yes you need to rake), storing items on the porch or desk (make sure they are not flammable), and other areas on porches or overhangs (including gutters). You need to contain them either using something fire safe (like bricks) or just clear the debris.
Install Safety Glass: One of the best things you can do is to use safety glass for sliding glass doors and even the windows in your house as they won’t allow radiated heat to pass through. A related idea is to use flame retardant drapes, curtains, blinds, and other window treatments.
Use spark arrestors: If you have a fireplace then you need to stop embers from traveling up your chimney and potentially starting a fire on your roof. If you install a spark arrestor, you will keep the embers down with the fire where they belong.
Cover house vents with wire mesh: If you have exposed vents and other openings on your home you should cover them with wire mesh to greatly reduce the possibility of embers getting into the house from a nearby fire.
Consider a detached garage: Some house fires start as a vehicle or other fire in the garage and generally the garage is full of flammable materials which really fuel the fire. If you can resist the convenience of an attached garage you may contain those types of fires to the detached garage sparing your home.
Respect electricity more: So many of us use extension cords and power strips throughout our house generally overloading the circuits without even thinking about it. If you minimize the use of extension cords and power strips and think more about load on each circuit, you should greatly reduce the risk of an electrical fire.
Use fire-resistant exterior materials: The outside of your home can provide a lot of protection from nearby fires good material choices include stucco, brick, cement shingles, rock, and more. You can also temporarily treat wood with fire-retardant chemicals and choose fire-resistant siding whenever possible.
Close doors while sleeping: It’s a good idea to sleep with your doors closed to block out heat, smoke, and fire gases. A closed door could easily make the difference between being able to get out safely or not.
Install fire-resistant shingles: Wood shingles and similar materials can be a significant fire hazard if possible use fiberglass shingles, clay, concrete, or even sheet metal for your roof.
Use a screen on your fireplace: Once again using a screen on the front of your fireplace will keep embers where they belong (with the fire).

Fire PreventionTools You Should Have

Here are a few items that you should have in your home:

UPS with a power cleaner: If you have computers and other electronics equipment that you leave on all the time a UPS that detects power spikes and absorbs them will both protect your electronics and reduce the risk of fires.
Own a fire escape ladder: If you have a two-story home then make sure you have a fire escape ladder and that everyone knows how to use it to exit the home if need be.
Install smoke alarms/detectors: One of the best ways to avoid harm to people is to know about a fire with enough time to exit the home. AskMen reported that only 20% of the deaths from home fires happen in homes with smoke detectors.
Buy a fireproof safe: You should store insurance documents, wills, and other valuables in a fireproof safe to keep them from getting lost in a fire.
Fire extinguishers: This really should be mandatory in every home. You both need to have fire extinguishers, need to make sure they are functional, and need to know how to use them.

We hope that these tips and resources will help you keep you new home or even your not-so-new home safe from fires (internal or external fires). Make sure you know how to contact your fire department as well and that everyone in the family is familiar with calling 911.