House Fires And Common Appliances

House fires are often caused by some of the most common appliances imaginable, but this is usually due to the mistakes and clumsiness of the people who are using them. Most appliances are completely safe to use in the home, but it is most often their misuse that causes accidents and fires, since all appliances come with a list of warnings.

The most dangerous appliances, though, in terms of the risk that they post to your safety and the safety of your home are the ones that are designed to emit heat.

Space heaters are very dangerous in the hands of someone who is clumsy or does not follow directions. Perhaps following directions is a little more important here, though. There are a number of things that you should take into account when you are using space heaters to keep your place warm during the winter. Never place space heaters near fabric items or upholstered furniture, if you can help it. If you have to, move these items out of the way and never use common household extension cords with space heaters for any reason. A heavy duty extension cord is the only thing that you can use here and most of us know these by their bright orange color and thick diameter. Small extension cords that you use indoors for small appliances will melt if you try to use them with space heaters.

Another item to be careful with is an electric blanket. Everyone likes to crawl into a toasty bed during the winter, but you should never use an electric blanket to do more than just warm the bed up for you before you get into it. Leaving these on or even plugged up while you are sleeping is a very bad idea, simply because many beds have been caught on fire and houses burned down because of this.

Grease fires are the most common type of house fire, since cooking is something that every household has to do in order to survive. Unfortunately, inexperienced cooks do not know how to handle grease correctly and often make mistakes. You can help prevent these fires by cleaning underneath the burners on your stove as often as necessary, since grease and food particles will build up and catch on fire when you turn the burner on. Keep baking soda around for these small burner fires and a fire extinguisher in case the fire grows in size.

Exhaust Fans and Ditra Prevent Mold

Mold can grow all over the house but there are a few rooms that are a bit more at risk for mold growth than all the others and this is usually due to the amount of inherent moisture that passes through them on a day to day basis. You may not realize it if you are just moving into a home of your own after college or getting out of your parents’ house, but the kitchen and the bathroom are the two areas of the home that require the most attention to keep them in tip top shape over the years (or just months) you will be living there.

All surfaces in your bathroom that are porous are in danger of mold growth, which is why you never want to install a porous flooring material in this room. Materials like hardwood or carpet are very bad for this and other wet rooms of the house like the kitchen and laundry room, so installing something like ceramic tile or sealed stone is going to be much better. Even if you install these hard materials, you can still have problems with mold and water damage underneath them if they are not sealed properly. You should check regularly for missing areas of caulking or grout, since this can allow water to get to the wooden subfloor and cause it to rot. You also need to check for this in the kitchen, since the same problem can come up. You can help prevent it, though, by installing Schluter-Ditra before you put the flooring material in. This is a layer of waterproofing material that will give you an added level of protection against water damage and mold growth.

Another problem appears on the ceiling if there is no vent or fan to allow the steam and heat from the room to escape to the exterior of the house. The ceiling will absorb this moisture since it has nowhere to escape to and will become waterlogged. Mold starts to grow on wet surfaces like this in a relatively short period of time, so making sure that the steam created by the bath or shower gets out is very important. This is also a problem in the kitchen when there is no exhaust system over the stove. You can fix this in both of these areas and other areas of the home with high humidity by installing an exhaust fan that will pull it out of the room with the flick of a switch.