 High prices for home heating fuels and public utilities made many people look for alternative means of home incandescing. The popularity of wood burning stoves is increasing and space heaters are being purchased very quickly. Fireplaces are burning kindling woods and artificial logs. All these ways of heating are good enough. However, they are main causative circumstances in residential fires, a great number of which may be deterred. You may avoid the loss of life and possessions because of fires caused by heating. To do this you should determine the key threats and follow the safe keeping hints, described below.
Fireplace and Home Fire Safe Keeping
More than one-third of rural residents use fireplaces, wood-stoves and other fuel-fired domestic appliances as main heat means in their houses. It’s a pity, but many people do not know all fire risks using wood and solid fuels.
Annually, 36% of residential fires are caused by heating with wood. Very often it is because of creosote increase in smokestacks and stovepipes. All heating systems need constant maintenance to work safely and effectively.
Here you will find the basic fire safety precautions that are recommended to follow to prevent residential fires.
Maintain Fireplaces and Wood Stoves Clean
- Have your smokestack or woodstove tested and cleared every year by a professional smokestack specialist.
- Clean the territory near the fireplace of waste, adornment and inflammable substances.
- Always apply a metal sieve with hearths. Let glass doors remain open when burning a fire.
- Set up stovepipe thermometers to aid observing chimney temperatures.
- Preserve air vents on wood stoves open and never limit air access to fireplaces. In other cases you may initiate creosote increase that would be able to cause a smokestack fire.
- Make use of flameproof materials on walls near wood stoves.
Safely Burn Fuels
- Never take combustible fluids to make a fire.
- Make use only of tested whitewood. Soft, damp wood speeds up creosote increase.
- Make small fires that burn entirely and create less smoke.
- In no case burn pasteboard boxes, rubbish or waste in your hearth or wood stove.
- Making a fire, put logs at the special raise on an appropriate journaled grate.
- Never leave home when fire burns in the fireplace. Put the fire out prior to going out or falling asleep.
- Sprinkle hot ashes with water and put them into a metal storage box outside your house.
Protect the Exterior of Your Home
- Pile logs outdoors at least 30 feet away from your house.
- Maintain the roof clean of leaves, pine needles and other remains.
- Coat the smokestack with a sieve spark suppressor.
- Take away twigs hanging above the smokestack, outlets or vents.
Protect the Interior of Your House
- Set up smoke alarms on each floor of your house. Check them and alter the battery at least every year. You may set up the new long-lived smoke alarms.
- Supply appropriate venting systems for all heating appliances.
- Lengthen all vent lines no less than for three feet above the attic.
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