Atchley Insurance Blog
Tips for Having a Healthy and Safe Home for Spring
Tips for Having a Healthy and Safe Home for Spring
First lesson in Spring: clean your house!
Clean every room in the house. Whilst doing so with cleaning products, air out all the rooms and try to use products that are safe, especially in rooms where small children and animals are present. A more natural alternative to bleach and Pine Sol (which contain harsh chemicals) is Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds. You can find it in any Whole Foods/natural market, or even online.
Spring = bees, creepy crawlers, and other critters!
Along with the beauty of spring come the beauty of bugs—lots of bugs. Ants, roaches, spiders, mosquitoes, bed bugs, termites, zombie bugs that die and come back to life—you name it. As long as there is plant life and great weather, there will always be bugs. When coming back from vacations, shake out all your things outside in case you’ve brought home some foreign insects. Bugs are mainly attracted to food in the kitchen and moisture around the house. Make sure to vacuum regularly, clean up every crumb after handling food, clean out your gutters, and make sure you have no leaks in your sinks and pipes. All of these things attract insects and give them a perfect home. Also, don’t forget to change your bed sheets at least once every two weeks! Having a clean home will lessen the presence of allergens and also those gross and unsightly bugs.
Zombie Bug.
Make sure you change your smoke/fire detector batteries.
This is an important step that no one really follows. You need be up-to-date with your smoke detectors. The National Fire Protection Association reported that 65% of all fire deaths were in homes with malfunctioned smoke detectors or none at all. 75% of those alarms were failures because they needed to get their batteries changed. You should change your smoke detector batteries once a year (unless you have the newer detectors that can last up to 10 years).
New California law says that you MUST install a carbon monoxide detector in your home.
Another type of house alarm you need to install is a carbon monoxide detector. Starting July 2011 under a bill signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger, all California homeowners must install carbon monoxide detectors in their homes. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that when inhaled in large quantities will kill you. According to the L.A times article, up to 40 California residents die each year from CO poisoning. It was also labeled as one of the most “avoidable deaths,” emergency room, and hospital visits.
“The bill requires that alarm devices, which can cost less than $30, to be installed in existing single-family homes that have a fossil-fuel burning appliance, fireplace or attached garage, starting in mid-2011. All other residential units will have to have the detectors in place by Jan. 1, 2013”
On a somewhat lighter note, here is a video by Spike TV’s 1000 Ways to Die featuring a woman who died of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. Watch out for this may happen to you! (in this exact way)
Pipe Snake
Tags: Pipe Snake
