From Trusted Choice
While there may be no place like home for the holidays, Baldwin / Welsh & Parker Insurance agency hastens to remind you that persistent myths about home safety cause unnecessary home dangers. Here are just a few commonly accepted “safety tips” that may be increasing your chance of damage and injury:
- Frying turkeys is safe, as long as you use the proper equipment. Even with the best equipment designed specifically for frying turkeys, experts have an extensive list of additional safety precautions. Those include: proper thawing, proper filling, use of protective gloves and eyewear, proper placement of the fryer on a level surface away from flammable areas, and keeping the correct type of fire extinguisher handy.
- You can test a smoke detector just by pushing the button. No, that just tests the battery. What about actual detection of smoke or fumes? One recommendation is to put two or three wood kitchen matches together, light, blow out the flame, then hold near the smoke detector to see if it reacts to the smoke.
- Stone countertops are indestructible (meaning, they don’t burn or break). While some materials are clearly more resistive to heat and flame, no countertop is totally immune from damage if extremely hot pots are placed on the surface; cracks, scarring and chipping from harsh treatment or certain cleaners can also make render your favorite kitchen upgrade more susceptible.
- If you do it yourself, there is no need for an official inspection. Governmental permitting and inspections are intended to verify that materials and techniques are safe and that they comply with local building codes. Even when doing it yourself, check with local authorities on proper permitting and availability of trained inspectors to help assure your “fix-up” doesn’t turn into a “breakdown” or worse.
- Basements sustain water damage through the floor. Most water enters a basement from the sides or above. If you want to protect your basement (can you say “man cave”?) and its valuable contents from water damage, then make weatherstripping the windows a higher priority than waterproofing the floor.
- New house equipment needs little or no maintenance. While it is true that newer equipment should be inherently safer, the increased amount of electronics in upgraded models makes following the manufacturers’ recommended maintenance procedures even more important. Those electronics also make newer equipment more susceptible to cold weather power outages and brownouts. And a winter holiday when your home is filled with friends and relatives is the exact wrong time to lose your heater.
Be mindful of these and other common safety misconceptions, so you can spend the holidays celebrating, not frantically redialing your contractor’s emergency number.
When More Than the Turkey Gets Fried
Did you know that a large percentage of home fires occur during the holidays? And while decorations and Christmas trees are major causes, turkey fryers are rapidly becoming a significant cause. According to the National Fire Protection Association, each year deep fryer fires cause an average of:
- 1,000 home fires
- Three times the fire damage of other forms of cooking
- Five deaths
- Sixty injuries
- More than $15 million in property damage
