5 Important Fire Safety Tips For Your Off-Grid Home
If you live in the middle of the forest, you need to be really careful. Will fire engines be able to reach your home before it burns down? Anyone who lives off-grid must ensure they know as many fire safety tips as possible.
Let’s discuss a few ways to prevent your home from burning to the ground, plus we’ll look at how to escape a dangerous fire. Almost 400,000 homes are destroyed by fire each year, so make sure you have good insurance.
1. Maintain Fire Extinguishers
You won’t find many homes with fire extinguishers on the walls, but it’s different when you live in the sticks. It’s good to keep a few throughout your home, but they must be maintained properly to ensure they work in an emergency.
Clean agent refilling is essential every time you use one, even if it feels like there is lots of stuff left inside. You should service extinguishers every 12 months. Contact your nearest fire station to ask if they can help.
2. Storing Your Fuel Safely
Do you know the difference between active and passive fire protection? Active protection includes extinguishers to help put fires out, but passive protection is just as important because it helps prevent fires from starting.
No doubt you’ll have extra fuel at home in case you need to use generators. You need to store it correctly, but it should also be far away from the main house. Keep it in a storage shed where it can’t cause any real damage.
3. Clear Debris From The Yard
We’ve seen a lot of forest fires appearing everywhere when it’s warm. You need to make sure they can’t reach your home. Clear branches and pine needles from the ground. Don’t let any flammable materials sit in your gutters.
Make sure you don’t plant any shrubs close to your home. Fires won’t reach your home if they’re unable to spread. It’s sometimes different if you’re stuck in the middle of a massive one, but those are unlikely in most places.
4. Don’t Leave A Fire Burning
Living off-grid means using a log fire to heat your home, which is fine if you take precautions. The biggest one is making sure you don’t leave the fire burning when you go out. You can’t stop a fire once it gets out of control.
You’ll also need to dispose of hot embers correctly, which is easy if you have a metal tray. Cover them in water and wait an hour before throwing them away. Don’t fall asleep at night until you’ve put the fire out.
5. Install A Couple Of Doors
Your home should have more than one door, even if it’s small. What will you do if a fire is burning next to your only door? If you can’t jump through a window to escape the flames, you’ll be trapped with nowhere to go.
It’s why you should always have two doors at the very least. If your home is pretty big, it’s worth adding a third door on the side. You’ll need to get out quickly because you’ll lose consciousness if you breathe in too much smoke.
Don’t Move Back To The City
You will need to move back to the city if your home burns down, so I’m sure you’ll take these tips on board. Do everything you can to prevent a fire from destroying your life.