Thursday, May 16, 2013

New Home VS. Old Home


Question: If your house catches on fire, are you safer in a new home or a 25 year old home?

Answer: The old home!

 

Modern, open floor plans provide more oxygen and the ceilings collapse sooner. Old homes produce open flames and white smoke.  While new homes do not always have an open flame, they produce black smoke which is comprised of flammable gasses or vaporized fuel which “flashover” in 3 ½ minutes, causing the temperature of a fire to increase from 250 degrees to 1,500 degrees in less than 10 seconds – your home just blows up. Underwriters Laboratories confirms that new homes blow up in less than 5 minutes whereas older homes take about 30 minutes to reach flashover. Due to average response times of fire departments, newer homes are more often total losses compared to older homes.