I am interested to know what measure you have all taken to reduce risks in and around the home.

I know in earthquake zones people fix their furniture to the walls and in hurricane/tornado areas often get window treatments, but I am also interested in the general measures such as smoke alarms, automatic lights in the event of power failure and measures to improve home security, in fact just about anything that reduces your risk.

OIMO

"reduces your risk" is rather specific, in my very humble opinion. As you point out in your two examples, what is done to reduce risk depends on what the risk is perceived to be. Are break-ins a concern in your area? Floods? Financial risks? Children putting their fingers in sockets?

I suspect that if you have more specific problems identified, you'll get more - and more specific - answers.

Smoke detectors built-in and connected so all go off together (big, well-insulated house-may not hear one going off ma distant room) with battery models as back-up

multiple fire extinguishers

Pool pump valved and connected to supply small fire hose with B/U genny power

Reinforced door hardware

Motion-sensing exterior lighting

TRAINED watchdog (not attack dog)

Roof reinforced against high wind (braced, screwed, glued)

Friendly with good neighbors

Stored food & water, survival gear, extensive first aid supplies

Stored repair, loss mitigation, clean-up, and salvage tools & supplies

Sufficient insurance

Well-laid, documented emergency plans


etc...

Jeff

Emergency auto-on lights that plug into the wall socket are a good idea. The only problem I've had with those are the cheap rechargeable batteries that the lights come with. In my experience they only last about a year and a half and then don't hold a charge anymore. I have seen another model that I think is a bit better and it uses non-rechargeable alkaline batteries. It also plugs into the wall socket and turns on in a power outage.

• Carbon monoxide detectors
• If you live in a radon-prone area, appropriate detectors
• Motion sensor flood lights strategically mounted on exterior
• +1 on Jeff's fire extinguisher recommendation – often overlooked.
• Decent dead bolt locks on exterior doors.
• Sliding glass doors and windows equipped with "anti-jimmy" devices.
• If it's overkill (or too expensive) to have an alarm system that's monitored by a service (ADT, Brinks etc), there are plenty of packaged systems (without an outside service) on the market.
• For the really thrifty, buy these instead — window decals and yard sign — that make a bad guy think you've got a monitored alarm system.
• The firearm of your choice close at hand.
• Braided stainless steel burst-resistant water hoses for clothes washer and refrigerator ice-maker (I installed after my bro-in-law had an "incident" while away on vacation). Believe may be mandatory in some municipalities.
• Earthquake straps on your hot water heater, even if you don't live in traditional earthquake country. <$20 for a kit.
• Is your garage well-secured, especially at night? (all too often an easy access point that's overlooked).
• "Mold" is a hot topic these days. If you have a crawl space that's moisture-prone, or other mold-friendly conditions, might be worth a check-up.
• If you live in an older home (aging electrical and plumbing; construction pre-dates important building codes), and you don't have the knowledge to do it yourself, consider paying $250 +/- for a *qualifed* home inspector to give it the once-over...a small price if it reveals significant shortcomings. Or, Google "home safety inspection checklist" and check out the 1.8 million hits.

Short list then: good medical insurance.

Find out if you have any aluminum wiring. I think it is mostly non-code now, but in some houses built in the early 70's, it is still out there. A neighbor had a new shingle roof put on. The vibration loosened up the aluminum wiring in a box in his roof. Caused a fire that burned down the house. Miracle no one was at home when it happened.

Hi,

I agree bws48 about checking for aluminum wiring, I have lived in 2 houses with it and both had fires caused by it.

Mike

In addition to having fire extinguishers, I review at least yearly with everyone in the house how to deply them. I don't like having dark areas at night around the front of the house. I'm generous with my motion lights. Better to have more range and more coverage than less.

Since my specialty is security here it is IMHO:


HOME SECURITY

- Have deadbolts on all exterior doors, to include basement and/or doors that lead to the garage.

- Lock all windows

- If you have sliding doors use a piece of a broom stick to keep door from opening. If you attach a piece of string to the handle of the door and the broom stick then you can easily remove the stick in an emergency. Just put a loop around the handle.

- Have flashlights by all beds and in bathrooms.

- If you have children get a dog not a gun. It takes years to train with a firearm to be able to grab it in the middle of the night, identify your target (friend or foe), aim in complete darkness and hit your target. I have heard too many stories of parents waking up and shooting at a loved one that they thought was suppose to be somewhere else.

- Unless you have gobs of money to spend, an alarm system is useless. Let me explain...when someone breaks into your home it takes several minutes for the system to actually send out the alarm, this reduces the chance of a false alarm. If you opened the door and forgot to take the kids out of the van, it doesn't make sense for the alarm company to send out the SWAT team. So a lot of companies wait a set amount of time and then try calling your house to insure everyhthing is OK. Professionals know this so if they want something that you have they will build intelligence and hit when least expected. Don't pay attention to the Brinks commercials, unless you are a VIP that can be held for ransom, no one is going to break into your house while you are making dinner. Just get the stickers, they will probably keep the neighborhood problem kids away, but even a system won't help with the pros.

- If you have teenagers, set a curfew, know where they will be and who they will be with, have phone numbers for their friends and their friends' parents, if they are late call them. Keep calling until they answer or if after a half hour call their friends, if no luck call their friends' parents. Again too many stories of kids who got "LOST" from their freinds at a party and things didn't go so well.

I could add a lot more to the list but I guess this is a good start...

If anyone occasionally parks their car outside of the garage be sure to remove the garage door opener. Personal experience of someone I met: one time they parked their van on the street in front of their house and it was broken into. If the thieves had only reached up and pushed a button, they could have helped themselves to a lot more.

Something to go with that...

All garage door openrs come with a preset code. Open up each door opener for cars as well as the main opener in the garage and switch around the little code switches. Its easy to drive down the street and open people's garages if they haven't done this.

Another...
Do not allow your young children out front alone. Child predators are everywhere. It is not enough that you be able to see them from inside through a window. It is not enought just to know where your child is down the street. Make sure they are not alone.

As an obvious fire alarms. But in my bedroom the wall is plaster (built in the twenties) and I have broken the plaster away many a time so i put some wooden board right up next to my bed and it has managed to protect the plaster of my wall.

Never use empty food/water containers to store chemicals. Lots of kids die or are seriously injured from this mistake. We just had in article in our local paper about one such tragedy.

Also, remove the block with 20 knives from your kitchen counter. You need to make it a little harder for a home invader to find a huge knife. One of my wife's co-workers was nearly stabbed to death in her own home, by a home invader who used a knife from the kitchen butcher block.

fire extinguishers on each floor, ditto smoke alarms, co2 detector,
out door lighting, firstaid kit, spare food and water stored...the usual

Thanks for the great responses, I did not want to make the question too specific as I wanted to see if this was a widely adopted approach or a forgotten area of preparedness.

We have the smoke alarms covered, the latest addition is one at the top of the stairs between our room and our child's room with an integrated light that activates with the alarm. Also got a CO detector too.

I have got a fire blanket but no extinguishers, in fact I have just taken a couple of old ones to the recycling centre as they were CTC and Halon, both rather nasty in confined spaces. The lack of new extinguishers is probably down to the UK fire and rescue saying that in the event of a fire you should 'Get Out, Stay Out and Get the Fire Brigade Out' as a lot of people apparently realise too late that they are not putting the fire out and are breathing in a lot of smoke! Having said that in a disaster scenario I guess you cannot depend on the Fire service arriving.

Friendly with good neighbors is an interesting one and not always easily achieved.

LED (appropriate name for this), as you say the auto-on lights seem to have a limited life due to the cheap rechargeables they include. We have got a JML/Johnlite at the foot of the stairs with an integrated night light that is on when the power is on, but the torch no longer has much run time when the power goes out or the fuses trip. I have just checked and it has a pair of AA NiCd, I was considering swapping for NiMH but it marked as replace with use Ni-Cd 600mAh or 700mHa only. It uses a regular torch bulb and I recently spotted an much smaller Energizer LED auto-on torch designed to fix to the wall, which I expect would have much better runtime.

We have only got one motion sensor light, over the porch/front drive. I do not like the motion sensing halogen floods as the blind you when they first come on and create very dark shadows.

I have not come across braided stainless steel burst-resistant water hoses for clothes washers but that sounds worthy of investigation as the previous occupants washing machine leaked so much water that the floor had to be replaced.

Reducing household chemicals and paints etc is next on my list, doubly important with a child in the house. Thankfully our knifes already live in in draw, knife blocks are asking for trouble IMHO. Have just checked by FAK though and most of its contents replacing, my DW has just agreed we should by a more comprehensive one anyway.

We recently replaced our Laundry Iron, the last one fell apart, with one that shuts off it is left face down for 20 or 30 seconds or if it is left upright without moving for 8 minutes, nice safety feature and will probably save us a fortune in power as we have both left in on all day on a number of occasions.

Here's an example on Amazon.com (searched Amazon/UK, but no hits). On this side of the pond, can be found at any plumbing supply house, or big box home improvement, like Home Depot, Lowe's etc. And, naturally, eBay. If you have an icemaker on your refrigerator, don't forget to get one for its water line (that's what burst in my bro-in-law's house ... entire Pergo floor had to be replaced).

Does anyone have an on-line source for small auto-on power failure lights? I used to buy them from Northern Equipment, but they don't list them in their current catalog.

25 products listed under Power Failure Lights here at The Tool Crib. I've bought tools through their catalog for years — always satisfied.

Reminds me of the time I was working on a remote repeater site and called down to the landowner to bring me some water for the batteries. His father brought up a couple gallon jugs of what was supposed to be filtered water. I started pouring the liquid from them into the batteries and had an eruption shortly thereafter. Apparently the old man had mistakenly brought me up a couple of jugs of 10 molar muriatic acid. The problem was, these were in the sort of 1 gallon plastic jugs typically used for water or milk, with no labeling on them at all.

The scary part; it was in the 90s that day, and I was contemplating taking a big swig before putting any in the batteries. That one had me contemplating life for a bit.

On the lack of fire extinguishers in the UK, the Get Out, Stay Out, call the Fire Brigade advice is probably appropriate. Not only are folks susceptible to smoke inhalation and failing to evac others, but in the US something like only 1 in 10 have ever actually fired off an extinguisher before they actually need to. It's not rocket science, but there's some chance that the extinguisher could be past its expiration, or they may seriously underestimate it's firefighting capacity, or not follow the PASS guidance. And I expect the fire brigade is almost immediately on scene once alerted, mitigating damage / loss. Modulo the 'in event of a greater emergency' scenario.

That said, everyone should practice with an extinguisher - you get to burn things, and put them out, what could be more fun. I used a 5 lb CO2 model approaching its 5 year expiration to have my wife and kids practice putting out some contained fires in the backyard. A little messy, but a good time was had by all.

For test driving a fire extinguisher you might also try your local fire department. One of the local towns that i worked in a few years ago had free training classes on fire safety and how to use a fire extinquisher. Didn't make it to the class but i did talk to one of the teachers/trainers and he said that they set up a controlled fire for practice and anyone who wanted to pull the pin could do so with expert supervision.

I keep my keys in a safe (which has a combination lock). The idea is that burglars will get in any way they can, and the first thing they will do is look for a way out. They know they may be in a hurry when they leave, so they won't want to be squeezing through small openings or breaking glass. Ideally they want you to hang the keys to your back or front door on a hook in the hall, so they can open the doors and carry out armfuls of your stuff without undue inconvenience.

I don't have fire extinguishers. I doubt their effectiveness. I do have a fire blanket for small kitchen fires, and smoke and CO detectors. I sleep in the back bedroom instead of the front, partly because that is where the emergency exit is.

I keep a hefty crow-bar under my bed, in case I have the opportunity to dig myself out after the house collapses during the night.

I have stockpiles of food and water etc for sheltering in place, but I think that's another topic.

As a former firefighter, I can tell you that in the right hands, a proper sized (10 lb) fire extinguisher can be a very effective tool.

All tools regardless of their usage, require proper training and know-how. You may not have this knowledge, however others do and you never know who is going to be with you or close by when the time comes to effectively utilize that tool.

That being said, there is also a fine line in trying to contain a fire and knowing when to get out to save your own life or more importantly other people's lifes.

Some fire departments offer basic training for the public in using fire extinguishers etc. It may be worth your time to check with your local fire department.

So do you put your keys in the safe when you are at home for the night? If so, what do you do if you need to exit via the front door quickly in the event of an event of an emergency?

No. Spare keys live in the safe. Working keys are in my pocket, or on my bedside table when I'm asleep. My keys are part of my minimal "every day carry", and I like to keep them on my person even when at home.

The safe is to prevent burglars using the keys if they enter the house when nobody is home. If someone's home, then it's a whole other situation.

The last time I saw someone use a fire extinguisher was over at a barbeque at a friend's house. He had turned off the grill, and we had been eating at the dinner table for 5 minutes or so when I noticed huge clouds of black smoke on the deck. It turned out that the grease trap below the propane grill had caught fire and had also ignited grease inside the grill itself. The thermometer near the propane tank was pegged off the chart.

Luckily, two of the people at the dinner were firefighers. Unfortunately, they then went on to have an argument about whether the best course of action would be to 1) open the lid of the grill, allowing some of the heat to dissipate away from the propane tank and then extinguish the fire, or 2) leave the lid closed so as not to add more oxygen to the fire, and try to extinguish it from below. After a minute or so of this, a non-firefighter at the table got up, grabbed a fire extinguisher, threw open the lid and put out the fire. I'm still not sure which firefighter was right, but I'm glad the non-firefighter knew how to use the fire extinguisher.