Preventing Natural Disaster Damage in Your Home

Home security isn’t just about making sure burglars and thieves don’t target your house and property. It’s also about securing your home and valuables against natural disasters. Homes can be destroyed by any number of events like hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes, but there are some steps you can take toward decreasing the potential damage inflicted by these disasters. The following tips can help you protect your home from wind, water, and smoke damage.

Decreasing Potential Damage Caused by Storms

Because flooding, wind damage, and even hail or debris can destroy your home, you should install weather stripping around doors and windows. Pressure-sensitive, adhesive-backed foam is the easiest to use if you’re weatherproofing your own house. Installing storm windows and doors is also a good idea. You can replicate the effect by fitting plywood that’s at least ¾” thick against windows. Preventing your windows from sending broken shards into your home is simple with shatter-proof window film, which you can easily apply to the outer surfaces of your windows. To complete your weatherproofing, you might think about replacing your garage door with a hurricane-rated version to protect your vehicles.

Limiting Fire Damage

Make sure you have fire extinguishers on each floor of your house and that one is available in your kitchen in case of cooking-related fires. Check your smoke detectors in each room of the house, including the laundry and furnace rooms, where fires are more likely to start. If you have a fireplace, use a screen to keep the embers from igniting your floor or carpet and have a spark arrestor installed in your chimney. A spark arrestor mimics a net or screen in the chimney and prevents any flaming debris from escaping.

Getting Your House Ready to Resist Earthquake Damage

Purchase some anchor wax and use it to make sure that your fragile items don’t fall off of shelves. You can stick it to the bottoms of glass, porcelain, china, and crystal pieces without worrying about damage to wooden shelves. Install latches on cabinet doors so that nothing falls out if an earthquake strikes, then secure your cabinets and other furniture to the wall using L-brackets. Finally, make sure that your water heater isn’t shaken away from the wall because ruptured gas connections can start dangerous fires. To do this, you can purchase some water heater straps at a hardware store, which should be used both at the top and bottom of the water heater and secured to a wall stud.