Prioritize Home Safety This Year

Nothing is more important than home safety and winter is a good time in our region to address it. The three essential areas for safety at home include electrical, chemical and fire hazards. Use this guide to assure yourself that your home is as safe as possible.

Electrical

• Look for overloaded electrical outlets and avoid using cube plugs.
• Check your home for wires that run under rugs and move the cords. Whenever anything covers a wire, it’s easy to overlook a fraying wire that could lead to electrical fires.
• Replace or repair any appliance that smokes, shorts out, overheats or sparks.

Chemical

• If you have an attached garage, chemical fumes from the garage door and the adjoining wall can enter your home.
• Storing paint, yard or pool chemicals in the garage can harm your indoor air quality.
• Store all combustible paints, cleaners and finishes in tightly covered containers in the garage or a shed to improve home safety.
• Always soak the rags you’ve used to apply stains and finishes in ample water for a few days, then lay out to dry and discard.
• Driving your car in and out of the garage can bring in carbon monoxide (CO). A CO detector placed 15 feet away from the adjoining door can alert you to unhealthy levels. The detector should be at eye-level or higher, since CO is lighter than air. Check the battery monthly.

Fires

• Remove dry vegetation from your yard and have your heating system serviced annually. The HVAC technician will clean it and inspect the flue.
• Never block the airflow in front of a furnace with furniture or stack anything close to it that that impedes the airflow through the air handler.
• If you use space heaters, be sure that they have automatic shut-off switches if they tip and never place them near drapes or furniture.
• Avoid using extension cords with portable heaters.
• Have the fireplace chimney cleaned once a year.

If you would like to learn more about home safety, contact Rinaldi’s Energy Solutions. We’ve provided HVAC services for the Orlando region since 1969.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Orlando, Florida and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about home safety and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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