4 Fire Safety Tips for Summer
We all talk about spring cleaning – but what about summer safety?
Not that it feels much like summer yet here in London; still, when the temperature starts rising, so can the likelihood of a domestic fire breaking out. As such, we thought we’d put together our top 4 fire safety tips for summer – must dos, or must-tells when it comes to your tenants.
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Check your smoke alarms
Let’s be frank – this should be a priority year-round. But, as we head into summer, make an effort to remind your tenants to regularly check their smoke alarms. When it’s hot outside – and inside, as a result – it could be that the heat from a fire hazard goes unnoticed for longer; so, testing smoke alarms regularly is paramount. Make sure you give your tenants a nudge to check the batteries in their smoke alarms and test them regularly.
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Check your equipment
Specifically, HVAC systems and others which can go unused during the winter months. Accumulation of dust and dirt can leave air conditioning units and other equipment susceptible to causing a fire, if it becomes overheated before having been given a good clean. If this equipment is in a communal area, take it upon yourself as the landlord to check things over; otherwise, again, there’s no harm in passing on fire safety tips to your tenants to bear in mind.
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Check your windows
Whilst you should never smash a window to use as an escape during a fire, it’s really important to make sure that ground-floor windows are able to be opened from the inside, in the event that they could provide an alternative escape route for residents if needed.
If it’s hot out, it’s likely they’ll be open anyway and you can check at a glance!
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Check your fire doors
The purpose of a fire door is to stop the spread of fire or, at the very least, delay it for a period of time in order to allow people to escape. During the summer months, it’s not uncommon to find them propped open to try and stimulate air flow – thus rendering them redundant! When you visit your properties, it won’t hurt to do a quick check and make sure tenants aren’t doing so. Fire escapes, on the other hand, can be propped open to let in fresh air – the two being totally different things, unbeknownst to some. But that’s an article for another day…
Here at Excel we’re hoping for some more lovely weather to come around – in the meantime, we’ll be out and about conducting fire risk assessments and spreading fire safety tips as ever (from a safe social distance, of course). For more fire safety tips and updates, check out our blog page – and, if there’s anything we can help with from a fire safety perspective, we look forward to hearing from you.
