Safety: Heating with propane

Safety: Heating with propane

In a lot of construction sites this time of year heat is required to allow certain aspects of the project to keep moving it forward.

Heat is required for work that is being done outside in the cold to keep it warm. Another reason that you would use propane heat is if you didn’t have access to a permanent electricity source that was reliable.

When working with propane there are several precautions that must be taken, propane is a highly flammable liquid that must be treated as a dangerous chemical at all times. When heating with this fuel source inside a building there are several things that must be done;

• You must supply a source of constant fresh air into the building. Propane uses oxygen to burn its fuel. Propane eats up the all the available oxygen in the room and without a fresh air supply the oxygen will be eliminated from the space and the heater will go out. If there are workers in the area they can be harmed by the lack of oxygen as well.

• You must make sure that the heating source is near the middle of the room away from any flammable materials.

• The propane containers must be kept outside, even if they are attached to the heating source. You must keep all propane containers outside and secured in a way that they will not fall over or be damaged.

When using propane outside in an enclosed environment like a tarped in area you must make sure that the same rules as above are followed. There are several things that you need to watch more in yourself and your workers when working around propane.

• When working around propane heaters you must be conscious of your own body. If you get a headache then you need to either leave the area or add more fresh air to the area that you working in. The reason that you have a headache is because there is lack of oxygen flowing to your brain. The propane heater is removing too much of it out of the air.

• Watch your fellow workers or employee’s, if you see anything in them that makes them look like they are drunk like swaying while walking or staggering or slurred speech.  These are symptoms of lack of oxygen getting to the persons brain. The person must be removed from the are immediately along with all other workers until adequate airflow can be injected.

With propane a strict safety policy must be implemented and enforced, because of the potential dangers of
propane everyone must follow the rules.    

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.