New House Safety: 5 Immediate Concerns

Moving in is chaotic and safety tends to get pushed to the bottom of the list, which is precisely when it matters most. These new house safety concerns are the ones worth clearing in the first week, while you still have the momentum.

Moving into a new space is a stressful and tiring experience. There is a long to-do list that you have to deal with when moving into a new house. However, there are few critical safety concerns that you should address instantly after moving to your new home.

Five Critical Safety Concerns to Address

1.     Address Home Inspection Concerns

If you are moving to a rented house, ensure that you perform a thorough inspection of the house on your own upon moving in and document any issues in the house in both writing and pictures.

If you have purchased a new house, review all home inspection documents that were completed during your house purchase. List all the unresolved issues in order of preference. This might include larger jobs, such as replacing the HVAC system or furnace, installing solid insulated exterior doors, and smaller jobs, such as insulation improvement and proper covering of exterior electric outlets.

2.     Test All Smoke Alarms and CO2 Detectors

It is vital to have smoke alarms in your house. According to the study, 3 out of 5 deaths happen in residences due to defective smoke alarms. Test all your smoke alarms and CO2 detectors and replace them with batteries if required. If smoke alarms are older than ten years, replace them immediately.

3.     Develop a Plan for Fire Escape

Do you know that you have just 2 minutes to leave your house safely after your smoke alarm rings? Therefore, it is crucial to develop a fire escape plan for your house. Ensure to check your windows and doors and create two exit plans for each room. Fix a meeting point outside the house where every family member should reach after exiting the house in case of a fire emergency. Practice your fire exit planning!

4.     Inspect and Clean Your Dryer Vents

Dryer vents pose a potential fire hazard inside your house. With time, lint, debris and other contaminants accumulate within your dryer vent and restrict airflow. This puts pressure on the dryer machine and increases the risk of fire. You cannot find out if the previous owner of the house had performed regular cleaning and maintenance of the dryer vent or not.

So, it is necessary to perform thorough professional dryer vent inspection when you move into a new house to ensure it’s clean and free of accumulated lint and debris. For this, you can search for a reputed local dryer vent cleaning and maintenance service.

5.     Familiarize Yourself with Water Shut-Off Valve and Circuit Breaker in Your House

You should familiarize yourself with the water shut off valve and circuit breaker in your house, as you are likely to need them in the event of water emergency and power outage. You can find the exact location in your house inspection report.

Know about the shut-off valves and circuit breakers’ exact location, test them by shutting on and off to ensure that they are working. By figuring out these things beforehand, you can save yourself and your family in case of an emergency.

The new house safety concerns nobody checks

Alarms, locks, escape routes and the water shut-off are the ones people know about. The one that gets missed every time is ventilation, because it is invisible and because it worked fine for the previous owners — or so you assume. You have no idea when the dryer vent was last cleared, what the last household did in the house, or whether the duct system has ever been touched.

Two checks take ten minutes. Run the dryer and put your hand at the exterior hood; if the airflow is weak, the run is packed and that is a fire risk you have just inherited. Then pull one supply grille and look down the duct with a torch. Clean metal or flex means you can leave it. Anything else tells you where to start.

If the house has a fireplace and you plan to use it, have the chimney swept before the first fire regardless of what you were told at closing — see chimney sweeping. Otherwise, the dryer vent is the cheapest safety job on the list, and estimates are free across all six counties we cover.