How To Reduce the Risk of Fire at Your Business
Fires pose a substantial risk to everyone in their path. However, they can be especially devastating to businesses. Additionally, the operation of heavy equipment often increases the chances of a spark. Because of this, business owners and staff must do all they can to prevent a fire and protect themselves should one occur on their watch. This is how to reduce the risk of fire at your business and the steps you can take to keep your employees and livelihood safe from the flames.
Perform Regular Equipment Maintenance
Heavy pieces of machinery and office equipment use large amounts of electricity to perform their functions. In fact, it’s these items that make up the bulk of your business’s energy consumption. Unfortunately, it’s common for their vital components to wear and break down as they age. This can prevent electrical cables from transferring the energy properly. Furthermore, it may trigger a spark when you least expect it. Fortunately, you can mitigate the chances of this happening by regularly maintaining your equipment. Whether you’re fixing small issues over time or replacing entire parts, these tasks are vital to keeping things running smoothly and safely.
Store Flammable Materials Safely
You should also try to be more conscious of where you’re storing your business’s flammable materials. Many companies utilize chemicals and other hazardous substances while manufacturing their products or running their machines. But just because they’re safe to use in some circumstances, that doesn’t mean that you should keep them in an exposed location. When they come into contact with a bit of heat or electricity, these substances can ignite and lead to a raging inferno in an instant. So, we highly encourage you to store these materials in a separate dry room with quality ventilation.
Maintain a Clean Workplace Environment
Even nearby clutter can catch fire given the right conditions, and these items may even block escape routes depending on how crowded your building is. For this reason, it’s also in your business’s best interest to keep your work environment as clean as you possibly can. This means removing any boxes or clutter scattered across the floor, wiping up spills, and arranging equipment so that your employees have a clear path through the facilities. By prioritizing these things, fires are less likely to occur, and your team will have the ability to get to safety if they do.
Practice Proper Waste Disposal
Just as certain manufacturing and cleaning materials can catch fire, so can your product waste. Every business produces waste. This can include everything from paper in the office to resources leftover after running a machine. Many of these substances can be flammable, so disposing of them incorrectly can leave you with a potential fire on your hands. Therefore, ensure you store any excess oils or chemicals in airtight metal containers before transporting them to a safe disposal site. For combustible items like paper, recycle them away from your running equipment.
Provide Your Employees With Safety Training
Along with taking proper preventative measures, you need to train your employees well. Your team must know how to abide by the rules you put in place. Training is at the core of any successful workplace procedure. This is especially true for those that pertain to workplace safety. By making your employees aware of the risks and teaching them how to keep fires from happening, your business will be much safer overall, whether you’re on the clock or not. So, you’ll want to familiarize your team with all the necessary safety precautions and guidelines for fire prevention. Then, you should provide them with an emergency plan to use should a fire break out anyway. This way, they’ll have all the resources they need to protect themselves and those around them.
Make Fire Protection Equipment Accessible
Another part of reducing the risk of fire at your business is making sure you have everything you need should one start. When people move to put out the flames immediately, they can stop them from increasing in size. This minimizes the potential damage and costs involved. As such, you’ll want to acquire fire extinguishers, control panels, and a sprinkler system and have them throughout your building. Reliable sprinklers, in particular, will be critical, as they have the quickest response time when intense flames appear. Therefore, keeping these devices up and running at all times will be vital to ensuring everyone’s safe when they need them most.
Install a Backflow Protector in Your Sprinkler System
As sprinklers activate, they pull water from your clean supply, then cut that water off as soon as they shut down. When this happens, the water left in the piping sits, collecting bacteria and allowing for the accumulation of harmful substances over time. Eventually, these substances can start flowing back in the direction the water initially came from and contaminate the rest of the water your business uses. This not only increases the chances of your workforce getting sick; it also hinders the effectiveness of your sprinklers should the time come to use them.
On the plus side, backflow preventers work to stop this by pressurizing the pipes leading to your sprinkler heads. So, when the system turns off, the excess water can’t return to the main water supply. This reduces the chances of cross-contamination and keeps your business healthier overall, which is a step beyond just protecting you from fires.
At Backflow Direct, we’ve dedicated ourselves to making all plumbing systems safe from the dangers of backflow and potential contamination. Even your business’s sprinklers can be a source of some nasty germs and toxins. But, our backflow preventer parts reliably force water through the pipes rather than back. They also keep each spigot performing at optimal efficiency when you need it most. Depending on your specific system model, we even provide an array of specialized repair kits to ensure your sprinklers are always compatible with our products. If you have any questions about our offerings or simply want advice on how to further protect your office’s sprinkler system, don’t hesitate to give us a call.