Timber Stables Fire Safety

If you have stables, chances are they’re timber stables, unfortunately wood sets on fire easily. As such, if you want to avoid fires that could very easily have been avoided, it’s important to ensure that you and anyone else using your stables follow fire safety procedures very closely.

For reference, it takes about two minutes for a horse to die in a fire. You have about thirty seconds tops to get the horse out of the stables before the smoke starts searing its lungs.

So what can you do to prevent this sort of occurrence? The most basic thing you can do is just enforce some basic fire safety measures around your timber stables. No smoking. No open flames. Make sure hay is properly dry before storing it. Don’t leave hot objects lying around where it could ignite dry hay. Make sure wiring and other electronics are well maintained. Install fire alarms. The basics. Also make sure that everyone is familiar with the layout of your stables, and drill out a basic plan of action should your stables ever catch fire so that people know what to do and how to do it.

Another more integral thing can be undertaken to ensure that horses sheltering within your timber stables are more protected in the event of fire, and that’s to carefully plan out the overall lay out of the stables. For example, make sure that the spaces inside the stable are fairly spacious and airy, so that smoke doesn’t build up inside too quickly. That can buy you precious minutes to get the horses out of their stalls and out of the stables before they start suffering from smoke inhalation. A high ceiling also helps with this.

You should also design your stable doors so that they swing outwards, so as to make opening them easier during an emergency. Exists should also be placed on as many of the walls as possible to provide your horses (and any hands) plenty of avenues for escape. It also helps to space buildings a fair distance away from each other, say about 10ft-20ft apart, so that flames have a harder time spreading from building to building.

 Every little helps, and there are dozens of other strategies and techniques you can use to protect your horses and property from fire. Doing all this can make your timber stables safer, and also protect your horses more effectively in the event of a fire.