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.