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New Boilers Keeping Homes Safe
You might think your home is the safest place you can be, but it should be brought to your attention that almost 4,000 people die in accidents in the home while 2.7 million are injured. It’s a very sobering statistic, but most accidents are caused by carelessness or a belief that ‘it couldn’t happen to me’ and they are easily preventable. If you’re a new homeowner or you’ve just had children, then here are a few tips to make sure you keep health hazards in your home to a minimum.
Put Everything Away After Use
One of the easiest ways to make your home much safer without spending anything is to have a policy of putting everything away after use. Putting away pots, pans and utensils in the kitchen is absolutely essential if you have children, while making sure sports gear is tucked away should be regarded as important too – for some reason kids just can’t resist playing football inside the house if they have the opportunity. Also, make sure utensils or ornaments are not hazardously close to the surface edge.
Childproofing is more than just sticking extra handles on everything. In fact, that’s often taking it quite far, because you can take precautions to make sure kids don’t go into rooms with dangerous chemicals or objects in. One of the easiest ways is to put safety gates on a couple of doorways in the house – especially the stairs. Also make sure your fireplace is properly protected by a grill.
While major house fires are uncommon, a sobering fact is that if one occurs in your home you’re twice more likely to die from it than if you have a smoke alarm. Fire at night will not wake a light sleeper, but it’s more than likely that a smoke alarm will. When you fit a smoke alarm make sure it is in the right place in your home, so you can hear it from your bedroom, and make sure you test it once a month. You should also consider getting a burglar alarm. Some home insurance policies state that you must have a burglar alarm to cover your contents from burglary. They are one of the best deterrents from potential burglars.
Checking your smoke alarm is one thing, but checking other appliances in your home for safety is another. You may not be able to check more complicated appliances like your boiler for faults because you don’t understand them. In this case it is a good idea to call in an engineer for your annual check up. British Gas offer homecare for boilers where you pay at set price a month and a check up is included, along with breakdown cover for your new boiler.