If you are a DIY enthusiast and love working with power tools, you certainly can appreciate the feeling of building something with your own hands. Be it home renovations, furniture building, or creating an outdoor structure to maximize your lawn space, DIYers are exposed to the same risks as professional builders. They need the same amount of personal protective equipment to ensure safety while working.
To protect yourself from construction hazards at home, make sure you’re wearing full PPE at all times. Whether you need to update or complete your PPE, a visit to stores like Bryson will surely help you get the job done. Here’s a quick shopping list for you.
Head Protection: Helmet Liner
A helmet liner that has a removable face covering that provides maximum facial coverage and full ear coverage. These liners are made with thermal fabric that offers excellent warmth protection so that you can work comfortably outdoors at any time of the day. It’s essential to use a liner that is compatible with your helmet. At all times, one should avoid using make-shift liners that may cause the helmet to slip or not rest properly on your head.
An excellent fitting helmet liner feels snug and keeps your helmet in place. This is important for your helmet to work correctly and effectively and provide you with optimum head protection whenever you’re wearing it.
Eye Protection: Safety glasses and cord
A DIY-er can never have enough eye protection. Besides, it’s always a good idea to have an extra pair of safety glasses in the tool kit. These glasses are slim enough to fit in your pocket, making them convenient to carry around when doing light construction work. The cord is extremely helpful in keeping your glasses in place, and it works with the other safety glasses.
Although many DIY-ers find these slim glasses more convenient to use, it’s still necessary to use goggles when doing woodwork or metalwork. Goggles offer additional protection by sealing the area around the eyes. They do an excellent job in preventing small debris and dust from entering your eyes, causing irritation. Professionals and DIY enthusiasts highly recommend keeping a pair of safety glasses and goggles in the toolbox at all times.
Hand Protection: Disposable, palm coated, grip, and close-fit gloves
Minor cuts on the skin of your fingers can put you out for a few days and affect your other tasks. To protect your hands from skin breakage and other injuries, you should wear gloves all the time. Make sure that you wear the right one for the job to ensure complete and proper protection.
For handling liquids like paint or varnish, a pair of disposable gloves are ideal for use. For yard work, wearing a pair of disposable Nitrile gloves under your washable provides a second layer of barrier from skin irritants, as well as from dirt from oil and grease. Disposable gloves keep your hands dry and prevent the development of blisters.
When handling power tools, palm-coated gloves work well in providing maximum hand protection. Close-fit palm-coated gloves offer excellent protection without taking away that real-feel grip. When working with hand tools and doing light work, these gloves provide optimum safety and additional grip, which improves tool control and manipulation.
Foot Protection: Safety shoes and disposable overshoes
We all have a pair of tried-and-tested construction shoes that came from old sneakers. But let’s admit that they’re not exactly safe for use and do not provide the necessary protection our feet deserve. Before you decide to put them on again, it’s best to consider retiring and investing in authentic safety shoes.
An authentic safety shoe is a good purchase investment; don’t think twice about getting one — get yourself a pair if you haven’t yet. It lasts long and can be worn for carrying out DIY work at home. Your feet need as much protection as the rest of your body. It’d be hard to walk around with a foot injury, so make sure you’ve got shoes that can protect your feet when you do your projects at home.
Safety shoes can also be used for doing yard work. To keep the shoes clean and dry, use disposable rain shoe covers. The rain covers keep them protected from splashes and getting soaked, which encourages bacterial growth. It’s essential to keep your shoes dry at all times to prevent odour and premature shoe breakdown.
Complete Your PPE at Home
On your upcoming shopping trip, refer to this quick list to make sure you’ve got yourself covered. Besides the PPE mentioned above, it would be wise to own a few coveralls designed for different jobs, as well as jackets, reflective vests, and padded suits. Remember, just because you’re doing DIY work doesn’t mean you can do it without proper PPE. Personal protection is vital for preventing life-threatening injuries in your workspace.
Wearing proper and complete PPE gives you peace of mind, knowing that you’re protected from injuries at work. This allows you to focus more on the task at hand and work more effectively. In turn, you get better work results which you can feel happy and proud about.
