Be kind to your home by preventing fire

By Justin Hunter

Owning a home comes with a lot of responsibilities. The most obvious thing to keeping a home running smoothly is to pay for it. The stress of every month just making your mortgage payment by not eating for the last week can cause any home owner to feel weak.

Alright, that’s a bit over the top but the point is clear, the finances from owning a home are tight. But there are still other things you must always be aware of and check to make sure there are no future financial disasters.

Preventing a fire in your home is your duty for yourself, your family and your home. The most common home fires occur from negligence. Your insurance company may not be too accommodating if you burn down your home from lighting farts on fire.

Realty Times columnist, Al Heavens, explains how to better ensure that your home will detect or survive a fire, in his October 19, 2006 article, “Better to Prevent Fires than Collect Insurance.”

“I believe I spent about $6,000 over 14 years upgrading the electricity in the last house. I had an electrician who believed that if the squirrels hadn't chewed the knob and tube to shreds, you blend it with the other generations of wiring, update and upgrade where needed, reorganize the box and work from there.”

The deadliest house fires are caused by faulty electrical wiring and typically occur in older homes where people either cannot afford to update the wiring or too many circuits are plugged into one outlet.

“The Home Safety Council reports that 57 percent of fire and burn-related injuries occur in the home. Many of those houses don't have insurance to cover losses, and often are abandoned because the owners can't afford to rebuild.”

However, if you do have insurance, they will often provide fire safety or prevention services. For example, The Chubb Group has “MasterpieceHomeScan,” a "complimentary infrared thermograph service" that helps policyholders find moisture and electrical hotspots that could lead to severe water and fire damage.

Appraisers from The Chubb Group will use state-of-the-art infrared cameras to scan walls and ceilings for these hotspots. These cameras can also detect poorly insulated areas that can lead to higher heating and cooling utility costs.
Currently, this high-tech service is offered to commercial and high-end policy holders, but it shouldn’t take long for other residential policy holders to request this service.

This high-tech service cannot prevent other common causes of house fire, such as falling asleep while smoking a cigarette. To help prevent this dumb occurrence from burning down the whole property, the Home Safety Council urges home owners to purchase smoke alarms that are listed by UL and carry the UL mark on packaging.

“Have smoke alarms on every level of your home, including the basement, and near every bedroom. Smoke rises, so smoke alarms should be mounted high on walls or ceilings. Ceiling-mounted alarms should be installed at least four inches from the nearest wall; wall-mounted alarms should be installed four to 12 inches from the ceiling.”

You should test smoke alarms once a month by pressing the “test button” and replace them after 10 years.

Having fire sprinklers is also a very safe insurance to protect from complete fire damage although they are expensive to install.

You learned most of this stuff when you were in elementary school, but now it is your home and your sole responsibility. Most fires are preventable. Do not be foolish; take the necessary precautions to ensure your home’s safety.

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