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Winter Heating Safety Tips


February 25, 2022

Brandon, MB – Did you know that heating equipment is one of the leading causes of home fire deaths? Brandon Fire & Emergency Services is reminding the public of a few simple safety tips and precautions that can prevent most heating fires from happening.   

  

THREE FEET FROM THE HEAT 

  • Keep anything that can burn at least three feet away from heating equipment, such as a furnace, fireplace, wood stove, or portable space heater 

  • Have a three-foot “kid-free zone” around the stove, open fires, and space heaters 

  

BE WARM AND SAFE THIS WINTER 

  • Never use your oven to heat your home 

  • Have a qualified professional install water heaters or central heating equipment according to the local codes and manufacturer’s instructions 

  • Have heating equipment and chimney’s cleaned and inspected every year by a qualified professional 

  • Remember to turn off portable heaters when leaving the room or going to bed 

  

WOOD-BURNING STOVES 

  • In wood stoves, burn only dry, seasoned wood, and in pellet stoves, burn only dry, seasoned wood pellets 

  • Start the fire with newspaper or kindling and never use a flammable liquid 

  • Keep the doors of the wood stove closed unless loading or stoking the live fire 

  • Allow ashes to cool before disposal 

  • Douse and saturate the ashes with water and place in a tightly covered metal container 

  

FIREPLACES 

  • Always use a metal or heat-tempered glass screen on a fireplace and keep it in place 

  • Burn only dry, seasoned wood, and remember to never burn trash in the fireplace 

  • Only use newspaper or kindling wood to start a fire 

  • Never use flammable liquids, such as lighter fluid, kerosene, or gasoline, to start a fire 

  

ADDITIONAL REMINDERS 

  • Carbon Monoxide (CO) is an invisible, odorless, colorless gas created when fuel, such as gasoline, wood, coal, natural gas, propane, oil, or methane, burns incompletely   

  • Heating and cooking equipment that burns fuel can be sources of CO 

  • When using winter heating devices, such as a fireplace, ensure that you have a source of fresh air entering the home