How can you protect against a basement fire?

Answer 1

-Your best protection options vary depending on the types of heating and cooling systems you may have.

Detection
If you have a gas fired water heated or furnace, your first line of protection for safety, fire, and explosion is an CO or carbon monoxide detector. You should place one in your basement and on each suceeding level of your home. This detector will alert you to dangerous CO gas from a bad water heater or problems within your furnace.

Secondly, smoke or heat detectors will give you a good first alert for fire. They can be easily purchased and installed from any hardware store, and even places like Wall-Mart. The best method is to wire these detectors (using green or red "fire" wire) together to your upstairs detectors so that they all alarm in the event of an alarm event in the basement.

Consider a fire sprinkler system. This is the best way to prevent fire resulting in total loss. NFPA statistics show that you have a 50-66% better chance of surviving a fire in a sprinklered building. While it's more expensive to install one after construction, you can't put a price on your family (or your tenants) safety.

Prevention

Of course, the best steps are fire prevention. Here are some simple tips:

-Don't store combustible or flammable liquids (gasoline, solvent-based paints, diesel, alcohols, etc) in the basement. They will accelerate the spread of fire.
-Keep combustibles (anything that could burn, and this INCLUDES plastic items) away from heat producting devices AND your electrical equipment. The National Electrical Code requires 36" clearance from all of your electrical panels.
-Limit the height of storage if you can. The higher you store things, the easier it is for a fire to spread.