Fire Safety Equipment You Need at Home
Most homes today have smoke alarms outside the kitchen and bedrooms, but this is typically all the fire safety equipment that homeowners consider having installed and maintained. For real fire safety, it's important to be prepared for the worst case scenario, and this means having more fire safety equipment than just a smoke detector.
Note a few pieces of fire safety equipment you may want to have in your home, and how they can keep you safe:
1. Safety ladders
If a fire should start in your home, how would anyone on the second story escape? Remember that fires burn upwards, so it's not unusual for a fire that starts in the kitchen to spread to the second story of a house very quickly, trapping anyone that is upstairs.
A safety ladder can be the best piece of fire safety equipment you buy for those second-story bedrooms. These are attached to the window frame and allow anyone to quickly and safely escape the house out a window, without suffering injury.
These should be installed in every room upstairs, and they may even be helpful in first floor rooms if a small child occupies that room and may have trouble climbing out a window and getting safely to the ground.
2. Fire blankets
A fire blanket is used to smother a fire once it starts, and this can be very helpful to have near a kitchen or fireplace. Trying to smother a fire with a regular blanket can be pointless, as many blankets used at home are not fire resistant and may allow air to pass through their fibers very easily. This doesn't help to actually put out the flames of a fire. The home blanket itself may even catch fire, depending on its material and design. A fire blanket is made with fire-resistant materials and is very dense so that it deprives fire of needed oxygen, quickly extinguishing it.
3. Home sprinklers
Home sprinkler systems are quickly becoming standard in new home construction, and they can often be added to older homes at a very affordable price. They work just like sprinkler systems in office buildings, coming on automatically at the first sign of fire or smoke. If you don't want to have one installed in your entire home, consider having a sprinkler system installed in the kitchen or in a hallway outside of bedrooms. This can ensure that a fire in either of these areas is quickly extinguished before anyone in the home can suffer injury.
To learn more, contact a company like Northern Fire Equipment Service with any questions or concerns you have.
