Whether your insurance clients own a house or rent an apartment, there's no excuse for not making home safety a priority.
Along with the peace of mind, these steps will go a long way in mitigating potential liabilities and avoiding costly insurance claims.
Taking some quick and easy steps can do wonders for increasing the safety and security of every person's home.
Check out our list of simple solutions to make sure your residence is as safe as it can be:
Smoke alarm batteries should be replaced at least once a year. (Photo: Shutterstock)
|1. Check your smoke detectors.
Per the National Fire Protection Association, three out of every five home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms (38%) or no working smoke alarms (21%) between 2009 and 2013. Dead batteries caused one-quarter of the smoke alarm failures. To ensure this doesn't happen in your home, make sure smoke detectors are present and check them regularly by pressing and holding the test button on the smoke detector.
After a few seconds, if a loud, piercing sound has not begun emanating from the smoke detector, either the battery or the smoke detector needs to be replaced. If a sound comes out but is weak, the battery should be replaced. Smoke alarm batteries should be replaced at least once a year — a good rule of thumb is to do this along with other safety precautions at the “Spring Forward” time change each year.
Related: Top 100 U.S. cities with the highest risk of home fires, ranked by The Hartford [infographic]
Keeping a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, and knowing how to use it, is highly recommended. (Photo: Shutterstock)
|2. Keep a kitchen fire extinguisher.
Between 2010 and 2014, almost half of reported home structure fires (46%) involved cooking equipment. Keeping a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, and knowing how to use it, can help you keep grease fires and other kitchen fires contained with minimal damage to your home.
When you purchase a fire extinguisher, contact your local fire department for training on how to use the extinguisher, and remember the word PASS when using the equipment:
- Pull the pin and hold the extinguisher with the nozzle pointing away from you;
- aim low, pointing the extinguisher at the base of the fire;
- squeeze the lever slowly and evenly;
- sweep the nozzle from side to side.
Be sure to protect children from inappropriate media content. (Photo: Shutterstock)
|3. Take safety measures for TV and internet service.
If you have young children in the home, making sure they cannot access dangerous media content through your television or internet service is essential. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, children between 8–18 spend an average of seven and a half hours a day using various forms of entertainment media, including TV and the internet, and the time spent interacting with various media surpasses all other activities, excluding sleep.
Choosing the right TV package and using parental control software on computers and devices in the home can protect children from inappropriate content.
Protect young children from electic shock by covering all electirical outlets in your home. (Photo: Shutterstock)
|4. Cover your outlets.
When childproofing your home, one of the simplest solutions for a common danger is to cover electrical outlets in your home. American Academy of Pediatrics research shows that young children, particularly toddlers, most often experience electric shock when poking metal objects into unprotected outlets or appliances. Many more tips along these lines are covered in Safewise's Room by Room Safety Guide.
Water damage can cause extensive and costly damage. (Photo: Shutterstock)
|5. Use water detectors in rooms likely to flood.
Water from both inside (plumbing leaks) and outside (flooding) the home can cause damage that is both severe and severely expensive to fix. The Insurance Information Institute found that the average damage claim was $7,958 for water damage, freezing, and mold between 2010 and 2014. Using water detectors in rooms likely to be affected can prevent large insurance claims and save money in the long run.
Having working locks on your doors may seem like the simplest solution for home safety, but smart locks take that safety and protection to a whole new level. (Photo: Shutterstock)
|6. Install smart locks.
There is a wide range of smart locks available, from those where you still use a key to those that are entirely digital, operated through apps on your mobile phone. Through your mobile phone, provided you're connected to the internet, you can make sure your home is locked even when you work down the road or you're on vacation halfway across the world. Having working locks on your doors may seem like the simplest solution for home safety, but smart locks take that safety and protection to a whole new level.
Taking just a little time and effort makes a world of difference when it comes to the safety of your home, and the money you spend to keep your home safe far outweighs the cost, in the long run, of not taking these simple precautions.
Sage Singleton is a home and community safety expert for SafeWise. She can be reached at [email protected].
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