Winter Safety and Security Tips

Winter safety and security tips

Peo­ple often regard the win­ter sea­son as the time when more things will go wrong in and around their homes. Insur­ance sta­tis­tics tell us that your home is at much greater risk of a mishap or prob­lem over the win­ter months. There are many con­tribut­ing fac­tors, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to Extreme weath­er, which strains your home­’s sys­tems. Extend­ed peri­ods where your home is unoc­cu­pied. Much less day­light for an extend­ed peri­od. And less foot traf­fic in neigh­bour­hoods.
There are things we can do to increase our defences against secu­ri­ty and safe­ty issues. Here are a few tips that may help keep your home and its occu­pants safer.

1. Enhance your out­door light­ing. New LED flood lights use much less ener­gy and make it more afford­able to keep your home­’s entrances and dri­ve­way lit through­out the night. Illu­mi­nat­ing the dri­ve­way when you park your car out­side reduces the chances of auto theft or B & E.

2. Avoid extend­ed “warm-ups” of your vehi­cle when unat­tend­ed. Most cars no longer require much warm-up, even when locked… an idling car is a great temp­ta­tion to a car thief. Nev­er let your car idle in your garage; the car­bon monox­ide emit­ted could be dead­ly.

3. Con­sid­er upgrad­ing your alarm sys­tem to include envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing. Adding devices that mon­i­tor for falling tem­per­a­tures and leak­ing water can pre­vent tens of thou­sands of $‘s in dam­age to your home. Being frozen, a bro­ken pipe is the num­ber one cause of water dam­age. Add ‘Smart mon­i­tor­ing” and be able to check your home­’s tem­per­a­ture from your smart­phone at will.

4. With your fur­nace work­ing over­time dur­ing cold spells and win­dows and doors sealed to keep the cold out, your home is more sus­cep­ti­ble to high­er lev­els of Car­bon Monox­ide. CO is a high­ly poi­so­nous gas pro­duced by burn­ing nat­ur­al gas, oil, or car exhaust. Have your fur­nace ser­viced annu­al­ly, includ­ing inspect­ing your chim­ney for cracks. It’s now also the law to have a work­ing Car­bon Monox­ide detec­tor in your home; it could save your life. You should replace the sen­sors every eight years.

5. Fire is anoth­er seri­ous con­cern for the win­ter months. Win­ter increas­es the chances of fire sig­nif­i­cant­ly. But a few sim­ple changes and pre­cau­tions will go a long way to reduc­ing the risk of a home fire. Be care­ful with elec­tric portable space heaters; nev­er use exten­sion cords to pow­er them, and use them for the short term only. You should nev­er use bar­be­cues and propane tanks indoors or in a garage. If you use a wood stove or fire­place, only use sea­soned hard­wood.

Any flam­ma­ble objects should be at least a meter from a heat source. You should clean fire­places and wood stove chim­neys at least once a year to pre­vent chim­ney fires. For fire detec­tion, ensure you have smoke detec­tors on every lev­el of your home; it makes sense and is also the law. You can also upgrade your smoke detec­tors to be mon­i­tored. It also scans for high heat in fur­nace rooms etc.
These five tips will go a long way to reduc­ing the risks to your home. Now how about the home occu­pants? If the worst-case sce­nario hap­pens and you’re snowed in, or there is a black­out, you need to have an Emer­gency kit that you can depend on to keep you safe for a few days. It should include some cash for emer­gency pur­chas­es, food and water to last a few days, a flash­light, extra bat­ter­ies, a shov­el, an alter­na­tive heat source like an emer­gency kerosene space heater, blan­kets and oth­er essen­tial sur­vival gear, depend­ing on where you live.