Spring Cleaning Safety Tips to Reduce Your House Fire Risk
Expert Advice for Improving Home Safety This Spring
Many folks approach spring cleaning with their home’s aesthetics at the top of their mind: they want their house to look good. But there’s a lot more to spring cleaning than meets the eye, from clearing up nasty microscopic contaminants to improving the overall safety of your home.
This year, we are sharing a few tips about mitigating your risk of house fires, which we hope you’ll integrate into your spring cleaning routine.
Declutter Indoors
For starters, clean up any clutter or debris that’s lying around the house and isn’t absolutely needed. For fire safety purposes, focus on these key elements during your spring cleaning:
- Make sure hallways and doors are clear and accessible.
- Make sure you maintain clear paths to all exits out of the house. The ability for you to easily leave your house—and for firefighters to move through it—is essential if a fire does arise.
- Keep all items, especially combustibles, at least three feet away from any heat source, including water heaters, furnaces, dryers, and fireplaces.
- Don’t store gasoline or other highly flammable liquids inside your home or basement; they need to be stored in approved, tightly sealed containers in a detached shed or garage.
Declutter Outdoors
Spring’s also a great time of the year to take a look around outside your home and do a little cleaning there as well. Start by clearing up any leaves, branches, weeds, grass clippings, and pine needles—or any other potentially flammable materials—from your roof, gutters, decks, etc.
Beyond that, you should get rid of any dead vegetation that’s within five feet of your home, and move any construction materials, trash, or woodpiles at least thirty feet away from the house.
Check Your Fire Safety Devices
Spring cleaning can function as a great reminder that it’s time to check your smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers. Test your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and make sure they’re working properly. If they run on batteries, replace the batteries (which should typically be done twice a year). It’s also a good idea to clean the exterior of these devices to make sure they’re free of any gunk, and it doesn’t hurt to dust off the areas around them as well. If a detector is more than ten years old, replace it.
It’s also a good time to double-check that your home’s fire extinguishers are in proper working order. (Although we generally recommend that you check your extinguishers once a month and have them professionally inspected/serviced about once a year.) To inspect your extinguishers, make sure:
- The expiration date has not passed.
- The needle on the pressure gauge is still in the green zone.
- The safety pin is still intact.
- The whole device is free of rust, corrosion, and other visible damage.
If any of these elements are out of line, replace the extinguisher. Check out one of our recent blogs for more information about fire extinguisher best practices.
Hire a Professional to Inspect and Clean Your Dryer Vent, HVAC System, and Chimney
As a homeowner, you should have your dryer vent, HVAC system, and chimney(s) inspected—and, as needed, cleaned or repaired—by a professional at least once a year. For these sorts of services, make sure you choose a trustworthy, experienced provider like Fresh Sweeps.
Failing to adequately clean and maintain these three systems can pose a major fire risk. When your air ducts, chimney flues, or dryer vents get clogged with soil, hot air can build up in the system alongside flammable debris—creating a seriously risky situation. Thankfully, a quality service like Fresh Sweeps can significantly reduce those risks while providing an array of other benefits for your home.
Clean Your Cooking Appliances
Don’t forget to clean and maintain your cooking appliances during your spring cleaning routine either, as these steps can also help to mitigate your risk of a house fire. In particular, get rid of any grease or fat buildups on your grill, smoker, oven, stove, or broiler.
If you have a grill or smoker you keep outside, make sure you also clean up any other debris that you might find inside it, like bird nests or spiderwebs. If these items run on propane or natural gas, it’s a good call to inspect the gas hose for leaks before firing it up for the first time this year.
Practice Your Fire Escape Plan
Spring is a great time to practice your fire escape plan with the entire household, making sure everyone in your family knows exactly what they need to do in the event of a fire. And if you don’t have a fire escape plan in place for your family, it’s time to create one and practice it thoroughly.
Minimize Your Risk of House Fire This Spring
We hope you’ll follow these tips to lower your home’s fire risk. We’d also like to thank Ohio State Fire Marshall, whose office provided the inspiration for this article. If you’d like to do even more to protect your home from fires, check out their free fire safety checklist.
