Here are some handy home safety tips that will help to ensure that you, your family, and your property are better projected from fire, theft, or accidents that can cause damage or serious injury.

Fire Safety

Although it may shocking to realize it, about 80 percent of all structural fires start in the home, and fire departments in the USA respond to an alarm about every 15 seconds. The first step in preventing your house from becoming one of those unfortunate statistics is, of course, to install smoke alarms and test them periodically to make sure they are working properly. A good way to ensure timely inspections of your alarms is to schedule the checks to coincide with “springing forward” and “falling backward” with daylight savings time. When you’re resetting the clocks just also check the smoke detectors to make sure they are working.

Keep fire extinguishers handy, on every floor of the house, and make sure that they are properly rated for the kinds of fires you might anticipate. Having an extinguisher that is rated for trash, wood, and paper is a good idea if you have a garage full of newspapers you plan to recycle. But unless it is also rated for electrical fires it might not be appropriate for a fire that ignites in the garage due to faulty wiring in the circuit box. You should also use carbon monoxide detectors to avoid illness or death due to such things as a faulty furnace, a running car enclosed in the garage, or a fireplace that leaks dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.

To know where to place smoke detectors, carbon monoxide alarms, and fire extinguishers – and which kinds are best for your home – just ask your local fire department. Firefighters are eager to help you practice home safety because it is much easier and safer to prevent fires than it is to fight them once they have already started.

Electrical Safety

Meanwhile one of the biggest sources of house fires is electrical appliances. The majority of fires that start in the home occur because of faulty cords, overloaded circuits, or improperly used electrical space heaters or other potentially dangerous gadgets. But many of these fires can be avoided if you are careful to visually inspect appliance cords and plugs for wear and tear.

Check for any frayed or crimped spots on the cord, any wires coming loose from plugs, or bent or otherwise damaged prongs. Don’t overload circuits by plugging lots of cords into one plug – which is easy to do if you use outlet strips or adapters that allow you to plug several gadgets through a single wall socket. Also make sure that when using a 3-pronged plug in an outlet that the electrical connection is actually wired for all three prongs. Sometimes the faceplate has three holes in it, for example, but the actually wiring connection behind the faceplate lacks a ground wire connection – which is needed for safe use of 3-pronged appliances.

It is worth the investment to hire an electrician or qualified building inspector to go through the house and check for this kind of discrepancy. It’s a simple process that will give you lots of peace of mind – and otherwise your home’s electrical system could be a tragedy just waiting to happen.

Door Locks

Of course another area of safety is locks, because although no lock can completely stop a determined burglar most criminals prefer the path of least resistance. The more you can do to make your house a difficult target for break-ins the safer it will be.

It is possible to buy relatively inexpensive and secure door and window locks and have them professionally installed. Use a deadbolt system, and also be careful not to place window panes within reach of your doorknobs. That’s because even if you have a fancy deadbolt lock it is easy to break into the house if a window pane is nearby. Just smash the window, reach inside, and unlock the door from the inside of the house. So if you have a back door and the whole upper half of the door design is comprised of window panes, for example, consider replacing it with a solid door that instead has a peephole.

Avoid leaving a “hide-a-key” in a fake rock in the flower bed or under the doormat. Even if you disguise it well you can’t prevent a crook from watching the house and seeing someone retrieve the key – which gives them an open invitation to mischief.

Follow these tips, use common sense, and also set up procedures like fire drills to train your children how to respond in the event of a 9-1-1 emergency. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially when it comes to protecting your property, your belongings, your pets, and your loved ones.

Fire hazards are normally associated with winter when people use space heaters and fireplaces. But many summer fires happen, too, so be especially attentive when grilling or barbecuing.

• You should never leave any kind of fire or cooking unit unattended, and keep lighter fluids and matches out of the reach of children.

• Storage of old paints, varnishes, stains, and household cleaning products can also ignite a fire. Don’t keep those kinds of items or pressurized aerosols in a hot shed, for example, because as the mercury rises so does the chance for spontaneous combustion.

• Summertime means using gas powered weed-whackers and lawn mowers, too, so take extra care when using and storing gasoline and other fuels. Even a small amount of gasoline left in a can has the potential to create a fire or explosion, and if fuel is spilled on a hot engine or other hot surface that can also cause it to burst into flames.

Don’t’ forget and leave gas cans or other combustible items in the car too long, either, or they might combust. Even a laptop computer left to bake in the sun has the potential to start a fire because of the chemicals in the battery, so use extra caution all summer long.

Accidental Poisoning:

Extra summer yard work also means more fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals around the house. Many of these are engineered as potent lethal poisons, so don’t let them create an accidental illness or death.

• Never remove labels from these kinds of items, and always be sure to keep the safety warnings and first aid information intact.

• When working with hazardous chemicals it is a good idea not to do it while small children can observe you. They may interpret the activity as play and then when you are not around they might try to help out by spraying plants on their own – with catastrophic unintended consequences.

• Many plant chemicals as well as those used to suppress rodent and insect populations take time to get absorbed. Read labels carefully. Usually it is best to make sure that no humans or pets are in the area until well past the recommended time to safely reenter the zone.

• Weather conditions also affect toxic chemicals. If you use a poison ivy killer when the wind is blowing, for example, it could harm your vegetable plants or accidentally wind up in Fido’s water dish.

Once you are finished with a chemical be sure to dispose of it in an environmentally conscious way too, otherwise those toxic elements could wind up in the soil or your own drinking water supply.

We all want to feel safe inside our own homes but it is an unfortunate fact of life that there is always the potential for accidents and mishaps. Stay alert, follow sensible procedures, and then you can really and truly relax and enjoy yourself all summer long knowing that you’ve done what’s necessary to ensure protection and safety for your home and family.

Whether you rent, lease, or own your home – and whether you live in a condo or a single-family home – safety is a paramount concern. Accidents happen, and they can be both personally and financially devastating. But many of them can be easily prevented by taking some basic simple steps to ensure that your home is a safe environment for you, your loved ones, and your pets.

It all starts with taking a complete inventory of any potential hazards, because by eliminating those you can quickly and easily enhance the safety and security of your property – without really spending a dime. Once you have evaluated any potential risks you can minimize them while intelligently organizing your home to make it permanently safer. That will help you sleep better at night, knowing that you’ve rooted out those problems before they happen by taking the right proactive steps.

The obvious culprits are such things as flammable substances stored indoors or in the garage where they could erupt into a fire. These include such household items as old cans of paint thinner, containers of kerosene or lawn mower fuel, and BBQ grill lighter fluid. Leftover paint stored away in buckets and cans, bottles of unused cleaning products, and stacks of old newspapers not only take up useful space but they also pose an easy-to-remedy household hazard. Check all around the house for these items and unless you’ve used them within the past 2-3 months, consider getting rid of them. The cost to replace that old bottle of lighter fluid is miniscule when compared to the cost of an accident, and freeing up extra room for storage can be a huge bonus in any home.

Keep in mind that many household items – from old batteries to cans of varnish or solvent – need to be disposed of properly to help protect the environment and to also prevent them from injuring someone who might be involved in hauling away your trash to a landfill. If you’re not sure how or where to safely dispose of something, contact your town’s municipal waste management department and they’ll be more than happy to help you.

But there are other threats to safety that can be either concealed or totally invisible to the untrained eye. These run the gamut from structural problems like rotted beams or loose brickwork to more subtle agents like toxic mold, radon gas, or carbon monoxide. Your home may have outdated electrical components, faulty wiring, inadequate circuit breakers, or a faulty chimney, stove, or furnace. While these problems sometimes show external symptoms such as scorch marks on the face plates of electrical outlets or a dimming of kitchen lights every time the refrigerator cooling systems comes on, others are virtually invisible and silent.

Each year, for example, many people are killed or hospitalized because of overexposure to carbon monoxide in the home – which is both silent and odorless. Or there may be rodents living in an out-of-the-way place like the corner of an attic or a tiny hole in the wall of the garage, and if they gnaw on electrical wiring that could cause a fire. If the wrong kinds of outlets are installed in the kitchen or bathroom they could lead to accidental electrocution, and if a gas appliance needs repair or the wiring to the hot tub is incorrect those could also have tragic consequences.

Even something as simple and benign as a bathroom vent fan can become potentially hazardous, because if the fan is not properly ventilated it will blow moisture up into the walls, ceiling, attic, or whatever other area of the house it is connected to through the fan’s ductwork system. That creates a breeding ground for mold, and many forms of household mold will make you sick – while some types of mold are potentially lethal. You won’t see the mold, and you probably won’t see that the fan isn’t working as it should, either, unless you trace the venting system all the way to the outdoors.

When in doubt, don’t risk your health and that of your family. We know that we need to keep regular appointments so that the dentist can look for potential cavities hidden under the surface and catch them in time. Otherwise we won’t notice them until they turn into a toothache that could mean a painful and expensive root canal infection. Similarly, for about the same price as getting our teeth cleaned and checked twice a year we can take advantage of the expertise and experience of a professional.

Licensed contractors, environmental inspectors, general home inspectors, or other specialists may be available to check your home or offer expert recommendations. Members of your local fire department can also be consulted, and they can help point out safety issues and do checks of items like smoke detectors to make sure they are properly working and ideally located within the areas of your home.

Staying aware of what’s going in within your domicile gives you a head’s up on any lurking problems. That helps to eliminate unnecessary fear and anxiety and enhance your safety and well-being – and it could even lower your home insurance costs over time by minimizing hazards and claims.

There is nothing that makes a house feel like a real home more than the sense of personal security, comfort, and safety that it provides to us and to our families. No one should have to live in fear of their safety and well being, but the unfortunate fact is that there are a whole host of different home safety issues or conditions that can easily go undetected. That’s why a comprehensive and professional home inspection is so important.

A home may, of course, look and feel fantastic to the untrained eye. But only a qualified and experienced property inspector can investigate to examine the potential for hidden or disguised risk that may be lurking beneath the surface.

These days, for example, many buyers and investors are taking advantage of lower real estate prices to purchase bargains. These might include foreclosures, REO properties being unloaded by banks and mortgage companies, or deeply discounted houses and condos being sold by homeowners who are under duress due to unmanageable mortgages. But when properties have been left vacant and on the market for a long time, when they have been abandoned by foreclosed-upon residents, or when sellers are strapped for cash then maintenance and safety issues are often pushed aside or completely neglected. An unsuspecting buyer may inherit a slew of unknown and unseen problems that can add untold amounts of repair costs to the actual price of the home – while undermining any potential for equity appreciation.
A qualified inspector will critique the home in a fair, objective, unbiased way but will leave no stone unturned while investigating any potential safety hazard. That may mean checking to be sure that the electrical wiring is up-to-date and that it meets local building and fire codes. An electrical inspection, for instance, includes major components like breaker boxes and will check to be sure that wiring is intact, appropriately insulated, and properly grounded.

But it will also look at seemingly minor things, such as making sure that there are functional GFI outlets near sinks and other sources of water. While these are relatively inexpensive and simple items, they can prevent an accidental electrocution and are mandated by building codes. Sometimes the face plate for the outlet may be present – with the characteristic GFI design and red reset button – but the wiring behind the plate is inadequate. The outlet can look safe and compliant, in other words, while it is actually no different from any ordinary outlet that will not automatically shut off in the event of a dangerous surge of current. Without a proper home inspection this kind of easy-to-miss hazard could go undetected – especially since it is a relatively minor part of the overall electrical system. But despite the fact that it is a smaller detail it stills represents one of the most serious health and safety hazard features – and if overlooked it could lead to a catastrophic outcome.

There are also structural issues – like unsafe chimneys, unstable building foundations, insufficient supportive joists and beams, or poorly designed stairways – that can be hard to spot without expert help from a property inspector. Mechanical problems with systems like stoves, boilers, and furnaces are another category that can make a home unsafe. A tiny crack in the heat exchanger compartment of a furnace, for instance, can leak deadly but odorless and invisible carbon monoxide gas into a house. Every year there are unfortunate and preventable fatalities that occur simply because homeowners are not aware of this lethal threat – but it is a problem that an observant home inspector can catch a majority of the time, so the situation can be remedied.

Not only do these pose a threat to the safety of occupants, but they can also cause the kinds of accidents that injure others and lead to financially devastating lawsuits. If someone is coming up your front steps and falls because of a rickety banister or improperly pitched and measured stair runner or riser, for example, it could have terrific repercussions.

Environmental hazards are another big area of potential health risk, because the presence of such things as toxic mold, radon gas, or asbestos can represent potentially deadly problems. A good building inspector with the proper skills and measuring devices can also determine if any of these pose a problem, while accurately distinguishing between false alarms and actual threats and dangers.

Rather than waiting for such latent problems to turn into unwelcome and unexpected threats to your safety – as well as the safety of family members and precious pets – every homeowner or buyer should have a complete home inspection done by a certified expert.