Fire protection for your home
Most house fires start at the stove, in the heating system, in the wiring or, increasingly, at a charging lithium battery. What most reliably saves the people inside is cheap: working, interconnected smoke alarms and a way out of every bedroom. What saves the house is mostly prevention, plus sprinklers if you are building or gutting it.
These guides cover detection and monitoring, extinguishers and the gadgets sold beside them, sprinklers and water supply, and each everyday cause. Where a product is oversold, we say so. For wildfire exposure, see wildfire protection.
Home Extinguishers
The right extinguisher in the right room, and an honest look at the gadgets sold beside it.
3 guides
Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Alarms
The cheapest thing in your house that has ever saved a life.
5 guides
Monitoring & Warnings
A local siren wakes the house. Nothing about it calls anyone.
3 guides
Dry Hydrants & Rural Water Supply
If there is no hydrant on your road, the water has to come from somewhere.
3 guides
Residential Fire Sprinklers
For the fire that starts inside. Not for the one outside.
2 guidesKitchen Fire Safety
Where most home fires start, and where most people do the wrong thing.
4 guides
Heating, Woodstoves & Chimneys
Creosote, clearances, and the inspection nobody books.
2 guides
Electrical Fire Safety
Arc faults, old panels, and the extension cord under the rug.
4 guides
Escape Planning & Egress
Two ways out of every room, practised once, in the dark.
1 guideStart with these
Smoke and CO Alarms: What to Buy and What the Law Says
The evidence on what actually works, and the placement and CO rules for Ontario, BC, Alberta, Quebec and the US — which differ more than you would expect.
10 min readRural Water Supply: Dry Hydrants, Cisterns and What the Fire Department Needs
Past the end of the water main, the fire at your house is fought with whatever arrives on the truck plus whatever your property can supply. Here's how that actually works.
9 min readDo You Need Residential Sprinklers?
The strongest evidence in home fire safety, the objections that don't survive contact with the data, the one that does — and why they do nothing about wildfire.
If you only do one thing. Check the date on the back of every smoke alarm in the house. Ten years from the date of manufacture, the whole unit gets replaced — not the battery, the alarm. Most homes have at least one that is older than the people living there think.