Home Accidents: Simple Maintenance Tips to Help Prevent Accidents

When it comes to safeguarding your home, you can never be too careful. The juxtaposition of dangerous appliances, harmful chemicals, and precious loved ones creates a narrow margin for error and negligence. Home accidents happen. People leave the stove on, they short out breakers, and washers overflow. It’s important to do your part to minimize these disasters and maximize your family’s safety (not to mention avoiding hefty insurance premiums). Read on.

How Can We Prevent Home Accidents?

Home accidents

All Wired Up

Electrical fires are one of the leading causes of devastating home disasters. Unfortunately, many of the dangers are hidden behind our walls. Take care and evaluate as much of the electrical work that you can control. For wires, terminals, joints and connections, simple wear and tear could be all they need to spark a disaster.

How to protect your children against unavoidable home accidentsReinforce potentially dangerous electrical with heat shrink tubing, a simple form of insulation that not only repairs worn connections but also protects against water and mechanical hazards. Of course, only proceed if you are trained properly; in most cases, seek out a licensed electrician to repair or maintain your home’s electrical work.

Plumb Out of Luck

As the co-conspirator to faulty electrical work, damaged or leaky pipes can cause tens of thousands of dollars of damage to a home. Keep a vigilant eye on your home plumbing system and be sure to call a licensed plumber whenever anything seems awry – you are better to err on the side of caution early than to be paying for a flooded basement later. Frozen pipes, leaky fittings, and corroded plumbing may be very common, but it does not mean they are easy to identify. Do your best to educate yourself on potential warning signs and you could do well to avoid costly repairs further down the line.

Kitchen Capers

How to Prevent your Children from Kitchen Accidents

The regularity with which you clean your kitchen goes far beyond aesthetic value. It is one of the most utilized rooms in the house, meaning frequent traffic at all times of day and night. Cleaning your kitchen helps eliminate the transfer of harmful bacteria that thrive in moist, warm environments. Simple tricks can keep a healthy, sanitary environment for you and your family to do your noshing. For example, microwaving a sink sponge for even a minute helps kill the majority of bacteria on it; and cleaning out your fridge on a regular basis will improve the air quality in the entire room and boost the efficiency of the appliance itself.

Pesky Pests

One of the homeowner’s biggest fears is the infestation of insects or rodents. Pests get into seemingly impossible spaces, hatching eggs and sprouting a new life – within your walls! And once implanted in your home, these creatures can be extremely difficult – and expensive – to remove. To properly defend your house, you must be well-educated on the threats. Is there a history of infestation in the area? Is the wood properly treated against termites? Are there any new plants or changes in the environment that may cause a migration?

These problems extend well beyond the typical ants and mice – infestations can happen with seemingly benign, innocent living things. Vines growing along the side of a house may seem harmless but could damage the edifice and significantly hurt the integrity of the building. Birds could be forced to relocate from a downed tree and may tear away at your window screens and room shingles for a warm, dry place to live. And for the bugs and critters that do find your way inside your home, it’s important to protect yourself against their natural curiosity.

The Bottom Line

As mentioned above, technologies like heat shrink tubing could work well to insulate dangerous wires from gnawing. Proper drainage systems can help defend against vermin crawling through the pipes. At the end of the day, these dangers may not be incredibly common, but their effects can be devastating if gone undetected, and it’s important to educate yourself and avoid costly, sometimes devastating repairs to your home.

Are there other home maintenance tips that we can use to prevent unavoidable home accidents? Please share them with us.

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