Smart Home Fire Services That Prevent And Minimize Fire Damage

A smart home system can percolate your coffee before you awake and do your laundry while you're at work. But most homeowners do not realize that it can also suppress a fire in your home and call in the insurance inspector. 

Although your smart home may not yet file your insurance report for you, an integrated home fire protection system can help protect your family in the case of fire. Following are key steps to developing a smart fire protection system. 

Choose Your Smart Sensors 

The functionality of your smart fire system will depend on the sensors you enable. Sensors act like your own senses in the home but with more acute, accurate, and expanded sensing capabilities. Unfortunately, you cannot smell or see the danger of a carbon monoxide leak, but a smart sensor can. 

Your home fire protection service may come with all the sensors you need — smoke detector, carbon monoxide detector, temperature sensor, and more. Sensors are also becoming smarter about detecting false alarms. Advanced systems may include sensors to detect aerosols and other substances that may be behind a false alarm. 

Develop a Smart Home Fire Protection Network 

Sensors are easy to embed throughout your home. When they can communicate through a common smart home system, such as Amazon's Alexa or Google's Nest, they can provide higher levels of fire protection safety for your family. 

For example, a smart home sensor network can:

• pinpoint the exact location of smoke 
• activate security cameras and alert your smartphone of smoke
• use voice commands to alert family members of a fire and provide instructions for safe evacuation. 

Expand Functionality Through IFTTT Commands 

If Then Than That (IFTT) commands allow you to create chains of conditional commands. In the same way that you can instruct an IFTTT-enabled coffee maker to make you a pot of coffee, IFTTT-enabled fire protection gear can be programmed to improve the safety of your family. For example:

• If the smoke or carbon monoxide detector goes off, send a notification to my smartphone. 
• Activate the video camera or take smartcam shots to record the fire and damage. 
• Turn on home lights and open all window blinds. 
• Automatically turn off all appliances. 
• Blink colored lights so neighbors are alerted to a fire. 

The smart home system does everything but file the insurance report. In fact, home fire protection services have been developed to take video and camera shots of fire damage and transmit them automatically to your insurance company.

Contact a home fire protection service to learn more about your fire safety options.