Heating equipment is one of the leading causes of home fire deaths.
Brandon Fire & Emergency Services has a few simple safety tips and precautions that can prevent most heating fires from happening.
THREE FEET FROM THE HEAT
· Keep anything that can burn at least three feet away from heating equipment, such as a furnace, fireplace, wood stove, or portable space heater
· Have a three-foot “kid-free zone” around the stove, open fires, and space heaters
BE WARM AND SAFE THIS WINTER
· Never use your oven to heat your home
· Have a qualified professional install water heaters or central heating equipment according to the local codes and manufacturer’s instructions
· Have heating equipment and chimney’s cleaned and inspected every year by a qualified professional
· Remember to turn off portable heaters when leaving the room or going to bed
WOOD-BURNING STOVES
· In wood stoves, burn only dry, seasoned wood, and in pellet stoves, burn only dry, seasoned wood pellets
· Start the fire with newspaper or kindling and never use a flammable liquid
· Keep the doors of the wood stove closed unless loading or stoking the live fire
· Allow ashes to cool before disposal
· Douse and saturate the ashes with water and place in a tightly covered metal container
FIREPLACES
· Always use a metal or heat-tempered glass screen on a fireplace and keep it in place
· Burn only dry, seasoned wood, and remember to never burn trash in the fireplace
· Only use newspaper or kindling wood to start a fire
· Never use flammable liquids, such as lighter fluid, kerosene, or gasoline, to start a fire
ADDITIONAL REMINDERS
· Carbon Monoxide (CO) is an invisible, odorless, colorless gas created when fuel, such as gasoline, wood, coal, natural gas, propane, oil, or methane, burns incompletely
· Heating and cooking equipment that burns fuel can be sources of CO
· When using winter heating devices, such as a fireplace, ensure that you have a source of fresh air entering the home.