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Siren & Safe

Placement & Code

Home Fire Safety Checklist

Print this, take a stepladder, and walk the house. Most of what you will find costs nothing to fix, and you will finish in under an hour.

By Ryder M.Last reviewed

Clipboard with a checklist and a pen on a table

This checklist covers the five things that determine whether a household survives a fire: enough working alarms in the right places, carbon monoxide detection, a way out of every room, suppression tools where the likely fire is, and a plan everyone has practiced. Work through it once properly and then re-run it annually — the second pass takes fifteen minutes because you will have written down the alarm dates.

The checklist deliberately does not sell anything. Its job is to tell you what is missing, and most of the answers are free — move an alarm, unblock a window, close a bedroom door at night. Every item that genuinely needs a purchase links to the relevant roundup.

How to use it

Print it, or work from the screen with a notepad. Take a stepladder, a vacuum with a brush attachment, a tape measure and a phone to photograph things you will want to check again.

Do the whole house in one pass rather than one room a week. The point of a single pass is that you end up with a total — how many alarms, how old, how many rooms have two ways out — and the total is what tells you where the real gap is.

Write the alarm manufacture dates down. It is the single most useful record in the house, and it turns next year's audit from an hour into fifteen minutes.

If you are buying this as a gift or checking a relative's house — a new homeowner, an elderly parent, a student in a first rental — this is the list to work through with them, and the alarm count and the escape-route section are where the gaps almost always are.

The checklist

Five sections. The first is the one that matters most; if you only do one, do that.

1. Smoke alarms

  • There is an alarm inside every room anyone sleeps in — including the basement room and the office with the sofa bed.
  • There is an alarm outside each separate sleeping area. Bedrooms at opposite ends of a floor need two hallway alarms, not one in the middle.
  • There is an alarm on every level, including the basement and each half-story of a split level.
  • Every alarm has been taken down and its manufacture date read from the back. Anything over ten years old is on the replacement list. Where the date is printed.
  • Every alarm is at least 10 ft from a fixed cooking appliance, and any alarm in the 10-20 ft band is photoelectric or has a hush button and is listed for cooking-nuisance resistance.
  • Every alarm is 36 in clear of a bathroom door with a tub or shower, a forced-air supply register, and the blade tips of any ceiling fan.
  • Alarms on sloped or peaked ceilings are near the high side but set down from the apex. Sloped ceilings.
  • Every alarm has been vacuumed around the vents with a brush attachment.
  • Pressing the test button on one alarm sounds the others. If it does not, they are not interconnected. Interconnected alarms.
  • No alarm has a missing or disconnected battery, and none has been taped over or bagged.

2. Carbon monoxide

  • There is a CO alarm on every level, and within earshot of every sleeping area.
  • There is one in or near the space containing the furnace or water heater — but not mounted directly above the appliance, where it will nuisance-trip on start-up.
  • Every CO alarm is UL 2034 listed and its date has been checked. The sensor has a finite life, commonly 7-10 years. Lifespan and replacement.
  • If there is an attached garage, there is CO detection on the house side of the shared wall.
  • Everyone in the household knows the symptoms of CO poisoning and that the response is to get outside and call 911. Symptoms.
  • There is a plan for generators: outdoors only, well away from doors, windows and vents, never in a garage even with the door open. Generator CO safety.
  • Fuel-burning appliances and chimneys have been serviced and swept within the last year.

3. Two ways out of every room

  • Every bedroom has two ways out — the door and a window (or a second door).
  • Every escape window opens fully and is not painted shut, blocked by furniture, or behind a fixed screen that cannot be removed.
  • Every upstairs bedroom without a second exit has an escape ladder stored in that room, not in a hall cupboard. Escape ladders.
  • Everyone who sleeps in those rooms has hooked the ladder over the sill once, in daylight, with the window open.
  • Any basement sleeping room has a compliant escape opening, a window well you can stand up in, and a cover or grate that opens from inside without a tool. Basement window wells.
  • Hallways, stairs and landings are clear of storage.
  • Bedroom doors are closed at night. A closed door buys minutes of survivable air.
  • Any security bars or grilles have interior quick-release mechanisms that everyone can operate.

4. Suppression, where the likely fire is

  • There is a fire blanket within one step of the cooking position — to the side of the hob, never above it. Where to mount it.
  • Gloves are stored on the same hook as the blanket.
  • There is a rated ABC extinguisher near the kitchen exit, not beside the cooker. Picks and sizing.
  • There is a second extinguisher in the garage or workshop, where flammable liquids live.
  • Every extinguisher's gauge reads in the green, its pin and seal are intact, and it is on a bracket rather than on the floor.
  • Disposable extinguishers are within their stamped date; rechargeable ones are within their inspection interval. Expiration and service.
  • At least one adult has read how to use an extinguisher and knows the PASS sequence. How to use one.
  • Everyone knows not to throw water on a grease fire, and what to do instead. Grease fires.

5. The plan, and the habits

  • There is a written escape plan showing two ways out of every room. Template.
  • There is an outside meeting place everyone can name.
  • Everyone knows to get out and stay out, and to call 911 from outside.
  • The plan names who needs help getting out and who is helping them.
  • The plan has been practiced in the last six months, including once at night.
  • Children know to stay low, not to hide, and to shout so they can be found.
  • Dryer lint traps and the dryer vent duct have been cleared.
  • No extension leads or power strips are daisy-chained or run under rugs or furniture.
  • Space heaters have three feet of clearance from anything that can burn and are switched off when nobody is in the room.
  • Candles are never left burning in an empty room, and none sit under a shelf or near a curtain.
  • Lithium-ion devices charge on a hard surface, not on a bed or a sofa, and damaged or swollen batteries are taken out of service. Lithium battery fires.

What to do with what you found

Fix the free things today. Move an alarm out of an exclusion zone, unblock a window, clear a hallway, close bedroom doors tonight, vacuum the alarms, clear the dryer vent. None of that costs anything and it covers a surprising share of real gaps.

Then buy the alarms. If the count is short or any unit is over ten years old, that is the purchase with the largest effect on survival — larger than any other product on this site. The smoke alarm roundup, or the combination alarms if you want to cover CO from the same ceiling positions.

Then the escape gear. Ladders for upstairs bedrooms without a second exit, in the rooms they serve.

Then suppression. A blanket by the hob and an extinguisher by the kitchen exit.

Then write the plan and practice it. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and it is the item most households skip.

Re-run it annually

Pick a date you will remember. Fire Prevention Week in October is a good one, and so is the end of daylight saving, which is when most people are already thinking about clocks and batteries.

With the alarm dates written down, the annual pass is quick: check nothing has been disabled, vacuum the alarms, test the interconnection, look at the extinguisher gauges, confirm the windows still open, and practice the plan.

The one thing to re-check properly each year is the escape routes, because they change without anyone deciding to change them. Furniture moves, a wardrobe ends up in front of a window, a storm window gets fitted, a spare room becomes a bedroom.

You are welcome to reuse this checklist for non-commercial fire-safety education — a fire department handout, a landlord association mailing, a school project — with attribution and a link back.

Questions people actually ask

What should be on a home fire safety checklist?
Five things: an alarm in every sleeping room, outside each sleeping area and on every level with all dates under ten years; CO detection on every level; two ways out of every room with the windows actually opening; a blanket by the hob and a rated extinguisher by the kitchen exit; and a written, practiced escape plan with an outside meeting place.
How often should I do a home fire safety check?
A full pass annually, plus a monthly alarm test. Pick a date you will remember — Fire Prevention Week in October, or the end of daylight saving. With the alarm dates recorded, the annual pass takes about fifteen minutes.
What is the single most important item on the list?
Enough working smoke alarms, correctly placed and under ten years old. NFPA's research puts nearly three in five home fire deaths in homes with no alarms or with alarms that failed to operate, and no other item on this list moves a number like that.
Can I print this checklist or share it?
Yes. You are welcome to print it and to reuse it for non-commercial fire-safety education — a fire department handout, a landlord association mailing, a school project — with attribution to Siren & Safe and a link back to this page.
Is a fire safety checklist a good gift for a new homeowner?
Working through it with them is. The gaps in a newly-bought house are almost always alarm count and alarm age, because the previous owner's alarms come with the house and nobody reads the dates. If you want to give something physical, a set of ten-year sealed alarms and an escape ladder for the upstairs bedroom covers the two biggest ones.

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