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Preventing fires during building or renovation work
11/2020
During decoration or renovation of your home, fire poses a real and dangerous risk. Help safeguard your home by implementing 10 simple rules with your builders or tradesmen.
- Avoid portable heaters. Fires are often caused by electrical heaters. Flammable materials placed too close to a heater are the most common cause.
- Initiate a no smoking policy. Smoking is the single most common cause of fire-related fatalities. This also applies to e-cigarettes and vaporisers.
- Ensure there is a fire extinguisher on site, a minimum of one per level. Make readily accessible firefighting equipment such as fire extinguishers, hoses, hydrants and emergency water tanks.
- Make sure people know how and when to use the fire extinguisher. Water extinguishers should not be used on electrical fires, for example.
- Implement a fire alarm procedure. In the event of a fire, define who will call the fire brigade and who will set the plan of evacuation into operation.
- Follow gas cylinder safety protocols. If gas cylinders are being handled, ask that they are safely secured in an upright position and fitted with a regulator and flashback arrester.
- Insist the site be kept clean and tidy. Waste material, packing materials, wood shavings and oily rags must be removed daily.
- Know what flammable materials are being used. Ask that all flammable paints be kept off the site if possible.
- Do not allow fires as a method of disposal. Insist rubbish is not to be burned on the site and instead should be disposed of properly.
- Implement hot works’ guidelines. Hot works are when your building team are using blowtorches or anything that requires a naked flame.
- No hot works undertaken in flammable or dusty atmospheres.
- No hot works to start until the surrounding area is cleared of loose combustible material, or combustible materials and wooden floors properly covered.
- Hot works preferably undertaken in the morning.