Count the things in your home that need to charge. Phones, tablets, laptops, a power bank in a drawer, a drill on the workbench, a robot vacuum under the couch, maybe an e-bike in the garage. Ten years ago, that list was short. These days, it keeps growing.
Fire risks and safety measurements have changed along with it. A modern home holds more plugged-in tech and more lithium-ion batteries than it did a generation ago. Here is what matters most, whether you own a house, rent an apartment, or run a business on Main Street.
Start With What You Charge
Nearly every rechargeable device you own runs on a lithium-ion battery. Almost all of them work for years without trouble. When one does fail, though, it fails differently than other household fires.
The U.S. Fire Administration calls the problem thermal runaway, a chain reaction of heat that feeds itself until the battery burns or bursts. The liquid inside these batteries catches fire easily, and damage or high heat can make a battery vent flammable gas. A single cell can shoot out of its case and start a second fire across the room. Even after firefighters knock the flames down, the battery can light back up.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology studied where and when these fires start in American homes. They found that battery fires in homes peak around 6 p.m., right about when everybody walks in the door and plugs in their phones and watches. The garage tops the list for where battery fires start, followed by bedrooms and living areas, then the kitchen.
That timing catches people off guard, since most of us picture a fire starting in the middle of the night. While fires start most often when charging starts in the evening, overnight is still when a fire burns longest before anyone catches it.
The same NIST research tracked consumer battery fires climbing at roughly 10 percent a year.
Your attention matters most when you’re charging. The Consumer Product Safety Commission advises you to stay present while a device charges, never charge while you sleep, and always use the charger that came with the device.
Charge on a counter or tile floor instead of a bed, a couch, or a pile of laundry. Keep spare batteries at room temperature. The U.S. Fire Administration advises against charging below 32 degrees or above 105 degrees, which matters if you leave tool batteries in a truck or an unheated shop. Stop using any battery that swells, leaks, smells odd, runs hot, or makes popping sounds. When a battery reaches the end of its life, take it to a battery recycler rather than the trash.
Check Your Smoke Detectors
Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a home fire by about 60 percent, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Most home fire deaths still happen in homes with no alarms or alarms that do not work.
Nearly every household, 99 percent, has at least one smoke alarm. The problem is many are untested, outdated, or completely dead. NFPA’s research found that 61 percent of households test them less often than once a month, a third never test them at all, and only about half can say how old their alarms are. Replace your alarms at ten years, whether they chirp or not.
NFPA recommends one inside every bedroom, one outside each sleeping area, and one on every level of the home, basement included.
When it’s time to replace your alarms, consider smart connected ones. They notify your phone when nobody is home, which turns a noise in an empty house into something you can act on.
Shop for these features:
- Smoke and carbon monoxide in one unit
- Photoelectric or dual sensing, which catches the smoldering fires batteries and wiring tend to start
- Voice alerts that name the room, so you know where to go before you open the door
- Wireless interconnection, so one alarm sounds them all
- Remote testing from the app, the only realistic way most people will ever test monthly
- Low battery and end-of-life warnings in the app, so you hear about it at noon instead of 3 a.m.
- A hush button for cooking smoke
Our recommendations include First Alert’s SC5, which uses photoelectric and electrochemical sensors, announces the location of the danger out loud, links wirelessly to other alarms, and works with Google Home. Kidde’s smart alarm ties into an existing hardwired Kidde system and lets you hush a cooking false alarm from your phone, keeping you from waving that magazine under the alarm to clear the smoke.
Attention is Prevention
Cooking causes more home fires than anything else, and it is not close. The U.S. Fire Administration estimated about 167,800 cooking fires in residential buildings in 2023, compared with roughly 27,900 from heating and 23,700 from electrical problems.
On the electrical side, the trouble usually comes from asking too much of one outlet. Give heat-producing appliances their own outlet. Don’t daisy chain a power strip by plugging one into another power strip. Keep extension cords out from under rugs and across doorways, and treat them as temporary rather than permanent wiring. Replace anything with a cracked cord or a plug that feels warm. Call an electrician if a breaker trips more than once.
Clean the lint trap every load and check the dryer vent line behind the machine once a season. Never leave a heat source unattended, including stoves, space heaters, fireplaces, shop heaters, or candles. If you leave the room, turn it off.
Close Before You Doze
The best fire safety upgrade in your home costs nothing: close your bedroom doors at night.
Researchers at UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute created the Close Before You Doze campaign to share what happens on both sides of a door during a house fire. Rooms behind a closed door averaged under 100 degrees. Rooms with the door open passed 1,000 degrees. Those same researchers measured carbon monoxide at around 100 parts per million behind a closed door, against roughly 10,000 in an open room.
Modern furniture and open floor plans mean fires spread faster and turn toxic sooner than they used to, so you have less time than you think. Pick two ways out of every room, choose a meeting spot outside, and walk through it with your kids twice a year.
Two more things: keep your house numbers visible from the road, and keep your driveway clear enough for a truck to access at any time.
For Business Owners
Set up one charging area for cordless tools on a hard surface, away from cardboard and fabric, and out of any exit path.
Check your network closet. Keep the area clear of heat, dust, and clutter that would block access and necessary airflow.
If you have a monitored fire alarm system, how does the panel communicate? Plenty of panels still report over copper phone lines, and copper service is winding down in a growing number of areas. If your system reports straight to your mobile device, the question becomes what happens to those alerts when the power or the internet drops at 2 a.m. Either way, the answer involves backup power and a connection you can count on. A monitored system that cannot reach anyone is not monitored.
Don’t Put Off the Test
Test your alarms this month. Check the date on the back to make sure it’s less than 10 years old. Inventory and monitor all of your battery charging locations, and close your bedroom doors tonight.
Smart detection helps you find out sooner, and sooner is the whole point. Follow DFN for more on getting the most out of your connection.