A friend had a housefire back in the mid-70’s caused by the dryer. I’ve always seen dryers as the Achilles heal to home fire prevention. You can do everything else right (and even be anal about it), but if you don’t inspect your dryer, your home can be a house fire waiting to happen.
We moved to a rural area for the first time in our lives. We noticed our fire insurance was rather high, considering, and someone mentioned to us it is because there are no hydrants nearby and the fire department is “volunteer”. We realized that we needed to be more proactive about preventing and protecting against fire.
Our first step was to buy fire extinguishers for the first time in our lives. (we’re both 58).
And I’m almost paranoid about the dryer. :-)
When it comes to fire prevention in the home you can’t be too careful. I worked for quite a few home builders. You wouldn’t believe how dumb some people can be. We had one woman used to leave her dryer going all day while she went to work. A neighbor noticed smoke coming out of this woman’s laundry room one day. Wind up was she had a lint fire. Firemen had to break her front door down(this was a $700,000, 5,000 sq. ft. home, etched-glass front door at $1,500) to put it out and when the woman came home she was p!ssed they did!