There are certain safety tips that are worth reminding people about concerning their homes, tips that can save big insurance claims and a lot of aggravation.
First of all, check your water supply lines. Every washing machine has two, hot and cold, and if they burst, especially if you are not home, it is like having a garden hose running in your house. If they are old they may need to be replaced. I have also found that the hot one seems to blow first. That makes sense since the hot water must stress the hose more than the cold water side. I’ve also found this is an area that it isn’t worth being cheap. Look for good hoses with the metal mesh reinforcing jacket. Baring a manufacturer’s defect they should last for years. The second set of water supply lines are to toilets. There again cheap may cost you in the long run but besides the lines themselves inspect the plastic nuts that hold the lines in place. If an overzealous plumber over tightened them and cracked the plastic nuts you could be looking at a disaster there as well. The final group of supply lines are under bathroom vanities and kitchen sinks. They are usually forgotten and tend to fail less, but again a lot of modern plumbing has plastic tubes running to the underside of sinks. It doesn’t hurt to inspect these as well.
Next in your inspections move on to your dryer lint hose, no water there but thousands of homes catch fire every year when they become clogged with dry, flammable lint. If it seems like your dryer is running forever and your clothes are still damp this is a good sign you may have a clog. Find the outside vent to the dryer hose and see if you have good airflow and then, if not, clean it yourself or hire a professional. Again, they make hoses like this out of plastic or metal. The latter obviously is longer lasting and much more fire resistant.
Now let’s go to your heat pump. Most have an outside part and an inside part called the air handler. The air handler creates a tremendous amount of water condensation. This is normally vented from the house by a pair of ¾ inch white PVC pipes. The primary pipe comes directly off the air handler internal drip pan and usually comes out someplace by your foundation. If it clogs the secondary line takes over. By code it should be coming out of your eaves, if your air handler is in the attic crawl space as many are, above a bedroom window. This is a way of telling you the primary is clogged and you have a problem. If you ignore it and the secondary clogs the air handler will start flooding your home. If you really want to be safe a float switch can be installed in the secondary drip pan so that if fills with water the entire system shuts off before it floods. Then when the A/C doesn’t work you’ll know you have a problem.
Alarms in you home are obvious but here are a few things to know. If you have smoke detectors, and you should, change the batteries when the clocks go forward or back, but also dust them. For them to work smoke has to get in them and a coating of dust will slow or prevent that from happening. If you have ANY gas appliances for hot water, a decorative fireplace, etcetera get a carbon monoxide detector. You cannot see or smell carbon monoxide but it will kill you. Again, if it is battery operated change the batteries and when you do, like the smoke detectors, hit the test button. If it doesn’t sound replace the unit.
How is your hot water heater set up? How old is it? First of all, they all have a valve to blow out water if the pressure goes too high. That should be connected to a pipe that runs outside the house or at least into the basement crawl space. Unfortunately I’ve seen some with just a short piece of pipe down to the ‘overflow’ pan beneath the hot water heater, providing there even is an overflow pan. Well, many hot water heaters hold fifty gallons or more and the overflow pan may hold two gallons at best, so you do the math. Of all the water damage you may have nothing is more destructive faster than scalding hot water rushing everywhere. It quickly warps wood, including sub flooring, melts vinyl floors, soaks very quickly into sheetrock to swell it, you get the picture. And if your heater is very old with multiple rust spots, especially around the base, maybe it’s time you replace it anyway. Old ones can also rupture from rusting out.
The last item isn’t about your home but your car or truck, and is something I find a lot of people don’t know. Tires are rubber, thus an organic material even if rubber made from petroleum. All organic compounds do in one way or another rot and tires dry rot with time. I know what you are thinking, I always buy new tires, but do you? All tires have a tire code on the sidewall. In this code the last two characters are a pair of numbers such as 07, 03, 00, or 98. That is the year the tire was manufactured. Although the vast majority of tires are sold in a year or two of manufacture some are forgotten on warehouse shelves. There have been cases where people have purchased tires that were ten years old or more, they fell apart at high speeds and killed the driver in a crash. Ask the tire salesman how old the tires you are getting are, and if he gives you the deer in the headlights look, ask to see the tires themselves. As to how old is old, that is a judgment call but personally I don’t buy any ‘new’ tires that are over a couple years old.
There are certain safety tips that are worth reminding people about concerning their homes, tips that can save big insurance claims and a lot of aggravation.