Fireplace Safety Tips to Avoid Fire Damage in your Home
For many homeowners, having a fireplace means staying warm and cozy on colder nights and enjoying a relaxing ambience in their home. However, having a fireplace in your home comes with a lot of responsibility and maintenance. To keep your fireplace operating properly and safely, it requires everyone in your home to be well educated on safety precautions. Here are some fireplace safety tips to avoid fire damage in your home and to keep you and your family safe.
- Clean out all old ashes from previous fires, before starting a new one. Ash buildup should be less than one inch thick to allow for better air flow and supply for future fires.
- Make sure to have your chimney inspected and cleaned yearly by a professional. If not, carbon particles left from previous fires can block the chimney or even re-light within the chimney causing an unwanted fire.
- Only use dry wood when starting a fire, if the wood is wet it will cause more smoke and soot buildup which can be dangerous.
- If you have small children or animals, it’s important to install a safety screen around the fireplace to keep them from accidentally getting too close. Screens also help to keep embers from spitting out into the room and damaging floors, carpet, and potentially catching other unwanted materials on fire.
- Do not place any flammable materials near the fireplace as embers can spark out and potentially ignite unwanted materials on fire if they are too close.
- Never leave a fire unattended and make sure it is completely extinguished before leaving the room.
- Keep all lighters, matches, and fireplace tools away from children’s reach.
- Always use fireplace tools to handle the fire, never use your hands or other objects not meant for a fire.
- Install a smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector in your home and make sure they are always working correctly and have fresh batteries.
- Have a fire extinguisher near the fireplace for emergencies.
- Opening a window can sometimes help light a fire or help it last longer, since fires need more oxygen than normal to thrive.
Finding Fire Damage Restoration Professionals in Albany, NY
Having an indoor fireplace can be a cozy luxury. However, it’s impossible to avoid fire damage in your home completely. Emergencies can still happen and if disaster strikes, Professional Fire Restoration is here to help. Our highly skilled restoration professionals will address the fire damage and help put your home back together quickly and efficiently. The team assesses the fire damage and creates a restoration plan that covers you and your home from point A to point Z.
Professional Fire Restoration should be the first call you make after experiencing any kind of fire damage in your home. We have over 35+ years of experience of turning crisis into calm. We’re here to help you along your path to starting new. Contact us today so we can help you with the fire damage in your home and repair it to what it was or make it even better.
