Home Safety Checklist For Yakima

Staying safe and secure in your residence should be your largest responsibility. But are you missing one or two key safety components? Take this home safety checklist for Yakima and see where your living space can use an update.

This guide starts with a few whole-home safety techniques, and then we break it down to specific room ideas. Then, phone (509) 240-9777 or send in the form below to talk to a security agent.

Basic Home Safety Checklist for Yakima

While you will want to take a room-by-room method for home safety, there are a few methods that work for a lot of your rooms. These items can link with one another through a touchscreen hub, and oftentimes react to other things. You can also manage every one of your home safety devices using a mobile app, like ADT Control:

Monitored Security System: All your windows and doors should employ a sensor that warns you and your family to intrusion. After your alarm triggers, your monitoring team responds to the alert and sends emergency personnel.

Smart Lighting For Each Room: Sure, you can program your smart lights to make your home more eco-conscience. But smart lights can also help you remain safe during an emergency. Make your downstairs lights come on when an alarm trips to shoo off robbers or brighten a path to a outside location.

Smart Thermostat: Like your smart lights, a smart thermostat in Yakima could save you between 10%-15% in gas and electric spending. But it also can turn on your exhaust fan during a fire.

Monitored Fire Alarms: At the very least, you have a smoke detector on every level. You can improve your fire preparedness by hanging a monitored fire alarm that senses excessive smoke and heat, and notifies your 24-hour monitoring team when it detects a fire.

Smart Locks: Every door that needs a keyed lock can upgrade to a smart lock. Now you can program codes to family and friends and receive notifications to your phone when they are used. Your doors can even automatically open, letting you quickly get out during a fire or dangerous situation.

Family Room/Living Room Safety Checklist For Yakima

You’ll spend most of your time in your family room, so it can be the best place to start your home safety optimization. Electronics, like a big screen or stereo system, typically sit in your living room, making it a tempting space for burglars. Start with hanging a motion detector or security camera in there, then continue on with all these safety protocols:

Motion Sensors: By installing motion detectors, you’ll have a loud alarm whenever they sense unexpected movement in your family room. The best devices are motion sensors that ignore a dog or cat or you’ll have a tripped alarm every time your pet comes in for a bite of food.
Security Camera: An indoor security camera offers a visual on your family room. Get constant feeds of the area so you can know what’s happening through the mobile app. Or chat with family members when they come home from playing by using the two-way talk feature.
Surge Protector/Outlet Maintenance: Protect all your electronics and quit overtaxing your electric system with a surge protector. For extra energy-efficiency, install a smart plug with a surge protector included.
Furniture Secured To The Wall: If you have babies or toddlers, you’ll need to attach your entertainment center or other heavy furniture to the wall. This is extra important if your family room has rugs or carpet that might make objects extra unbalanced.
Special Locks For Sliding Glass Doors: If your living room uses a sliding glass door that slides out to a backyard, deck, or outside porch, you know that the latch is usually worthless. Put in an enhanced lock, like a metal bar or small locks that secures the door to the bottom and top of the door frame.

Kitchen Safety Checklist For Yakima

The kitchen has many items that should provide comfort and safety to your house. Many of these things should be a snap to add and should be bought from the Target or Walmart:

Fire Extinguisher: A fire can come from from a neglected frying pan or an errant grease splatter. Always have a fire extinguisher at hand for any stove or oven mishaps.
GFCI Box On Every Outlet: A circuit interrupter outlet should be standard on outlets where they’re close to running water to prevent a deadly shock. That includes the plug outlets around your sink and kitchen counter. Since 1987, it’s been required to have one GFCI per dedicated circuit. But if you don’t want all your outlets to flip off when one outlet trips, you’ll want to have a single GFCI for every outlet.

Monitored Carbon Monoxide Detector: A carbon monoxide detector is recommended for spaces that use a gas oven and range. If your gas lines leak, the CO detector will emit a high-decibel sound and ping your monitoring center.
Cleaning Wipes Or Spray: The most overlooked safety issue in the kitchen is actually bacteria and protein from blood from meat and other foods. Always keep antiviral wipes or a bleach spray to sanitize your counters after making a meal.
Refrigerator Alarm: The food items in the fridge should stay at a cold temperature to be ready to use. If you leave the refrigerator door open too long, then an alarm beep will remind you to check the seal. Some fridges already have a pre-installed alarm, some do not, and you’ll have to get an external alarm from online.

Bathroom Safety Checklist For Yakima

Just because you may not have a bunch of space in your bathroom doesn’t mean that there aren’t safety issues. From water problems to medicine care, here are some safety improvements for your bathroom:

Flood Sensors: A leaking sink or bathtub can lead to extensive damage. Find a leaking pipe with a flood detector and save yourself from redoing the entire bathroom.
Textured Bathroom Mats: A slip in the bathroom can be devastating, causing bumps, sore joints, or broken bones. Make sure you prevent these issues with a non-slip bathroom mat for while you towel off.

No-slip Bathtub Stickies: Like a tiled floor, a tub can be a slick surface to move in. It’s a good idea that every tub has some no-slip strips so your feet have a bumpy patch to grip.

Medicine Door Latch: If you have curious children or a family member with memory complications, you need to take extra precautions regarding medicine. Safeguard your prescriptions by using a medicine cabinet with a latch that locks.

Circuit Interrupter Outlet: Just like the kitchen, you should also put in a surge protecting GFCI outlet on every bathroom circuit. These will shut off the current if they ever get wet or there’s a sudden jolt from a curling iron or hair dryer.

Child’s Bedroom Safety Checklist For Yakima

Your kid’s bedroom should counterbalance safety with accessibility. If their window coverings or other things are safe but hard to manage, then your children may get around the device with unsafe methods -- like climb a chest of drawers -- to open them. Here are some simple, yet safe, ideas:

Cord-Free Window Coverings: Safety professionals have designated corded window treatments an unsuspecting problem for children and animals. Install motorized blinds or shades that you can easily manage with a remote. Or even better, link your motorized treatments to your security system so they rise without anyone’s help when the sun comes up, and go down at night for added darkness.

Tableside Security Camera: A camera perched on your kid’s dresser can double as a baby monitor that you can watch with a mobile device. And when they want something, they can hit the intercom talk button on the camera.

Outlet Covers: While every outlet should use covers on them when you have little children, this is especially important in a child’s bedroom. It’s the one place in your home where your toddler will most likely hang out solo without consistent parental supervision.

Window Fire Ladder: If you have bedrooms on above the first floor, then you will want to put in a window fire ladder. These will let a child leave the house when the hallway or lower levels are blocked off with fire. Remember to rehearse how to unfurl them at least twice a year.

Toy Box Or Low Shelves: It’s interesting to think about a toy chest as a safety component, but you’ll see the light if you’ve ever tramped on an action figure in your socked feet. A uncluttered floor gives your child a quick way out when there’s a fire or break-in.

Master Bedroom Safety Checklist For Yakima

The bedroom should be your calm space, so let your safety items make life easier when you have an emergency. After all, being startled awake by a loud siren can be quite a shock.

Home Security Touchscreen: Having a touchscreen on your nightstand lets you see what’s happening without getting out of bed. You could also turn on your ADT phone app but, the HD touchscreen may be better to use when you’re coming out of sleep and finding your bearings.

Device Charging Area: We rely on our phones for so much now alarms, web browsers, time wasters, and maybe even phones. The only problem is that a dead device in the middle of the night cuts us off from the outside world if something goes wrong. To make sure your phone always works, a charging station or cord becomes an essential.

Nightlights Or Voice Activated Smart Lights: A tiny light helps ground you when you’re startled awake from a siren or other loud noises. If you can’t fall asleep with a small nightlight, install smart lights in your bedroom. Then you can control light simply with a mobile device or voice command.
Fireproof Safe: Keep your important paperwork like social security cards, passports, or a bankbook in a fireproof safe. This can be a big one that is located in your closet or a smaller portable lockbox that you can grab on your way out during an emergency event.

Temperature Sensor: The problem with bedrooms is that they might be too warm or be frigid since they are across the house from the thermostat. A heat sensor will talk to your smart thermostat so you should have a pleasant, relaxing sleep at the perfect climate.

Basement/Garage Safety Checklist For Yakima

Most safety needs in the garage or basement deal with your water heater or HVAC system. Discovering issues at the source can stop larger disasters in the future. So, as you look around your basement or garage, pay attention to these safety items:

Water Detector Or Sump Pump Alarm: Installing a flood alarm in back of your water heater and sump pump drain can prevent you from wading into a mess when you go into your basement or garage. It’s much better than sifting through a heap of soggy storage boxes.

CO Alarm: It’s nice to hang a CO detector in areas where a natural gas leak can happen. If you use gas heat, you should hang a detector in the same area as your HVAC unit.
Remote Water Shutoff Valve: If your water sensor detects a plumbing leak or a busted pipe, then you will have to cap the primary water pipe immediately. With a WiFi shutoff valve, you can turn off your water flow from anywhere in the world. That’s perfect when you’re out of town and get a water leak text on your smartphone.
Garage Door Sensor: Leaving the garage door up brings about all sorts of issues. You can lose heat or air through that large opening, and critters or thieves can just saunder in. A sensor will alert you to a forgotten garage door and lets you lower it remotely.
Heat Sensor: A temperature sensor in your garage or basement is handy if you fret about your pipes freezing. The temperature in these rooms can be wildly different than the rest of the house, so you may need to maintain a closer eye on the temp through your security mobile app.

Outside Perimeter Safety Checklist for Yakima

Your yard, drive, and front walk are just as crucial to make safe as the rest of your house. Try this checklist to create a safe outside:

Doorbell Camera: See who’s knocking on the front door before you open it and welcome guests. See packages and record video clips if they are taken.

Outdoor Camera: You can place outdoor security cameras to guard against suspicious lurkers in your back yard. These security cameras are nice in areas where you may not have a view -- like around a cellar or by the garage.

Low Bushes: Overgrown shrubs can offer some privacy, but they also block your view of the yard and curb. Don’t give potential burglars a place to hide. Plus, high bushes or foliage against your structure can clog gutters and bring in pests.
ADT Signage: One of the most popular deterrents for a break-in is advertising to potential burglars that you own a monitored home security system. An ADT yard sign by the stoop and a window cling will alert ne'er-do-wells that they should keep walking to an easier score.

Motion Controlled Flood Light Fixtures: Light is the largest enemy to people who sneak around in the unlit places. Motion-activated flood lights on your porch, garage, or deck can shoo possible intruders away. They also help you get inside when you arrive back home late at night.

Use Secure24 Alarm Systems To Help You With Your Home Safety Checklist for Yakima

While Secure24 Alarm Systems can’t help you with each household item on your Yakima home safety checklist, we can offer a powerful security system. With easy-to-use devices and ADT monitoring, we can personalize the perfect system for your home’s needs. Simply phone (509) 240-9777 and talk to a professional or complete the form below. Or personalize your own ADT system with our Security System Designer.