Put an escape ladder in every upstairs bedroom
One-time · any month works
Why it matters
Fire escape planning upstairs comes down to one question: if the stairway is full of smoke, how does each person in each bedroom get down? The window is the answer — which makes a ladder that hooks over the sill the cheapest piece of life-safety equipment in the house.
Pair this with your window-egress card: a ladder behind a painted-shut window is a box of chain, not an exit.
What skipping it costs
$0–$150
Stairs are the plan until they're where the smoke is. An upstairs bedroom without a second way down has exactly one exit, and housefires are timed in minutes. The entire priced cost of fixing that is a $60 box under each bed — which is the point.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: One emergency escape ladder per occupied upstairs bedroom (~$40–$80 each, 2-story; ~$90–$150, 3-story).
- Count occupied upstairs bedrooms. That's your ladder count — one each, because a fire that blocks the hall blocks room-to-room borrowing too.
- Buy hook-style emergency ladders rated for your floor height. Standard brands run $40–$80 for two-story models. Skip the bargain-bin no-name — this is a product category where the UL mark matters.
- Stage each one where a sleepy occupant finds it without light: under the bed or in the nightstand cabinet. Not the closet shelf behind the sweaters.
- Do a floor-level familiarization with everyone old enough: open the box, hook it over the sill, see how it deploys. Don't do a full practice climb — many models are certified for one deployment, and a broken ankle practicing beats nothing but not by much. Familiar hands in daylight are the goal.
- Walk the plan while you're at it: two ways out of every room, a meeting spot outside, and the rule that nobody goes back in.
Hire it out
$40–$150National fair range — local labor moves this number.
Honestly? There's no service call here — this card's "hire" budget IS the hardware ($40–$150 covers the ladders themselves for most homes). If a home inspector or handyman is already on site for something else, have them eyeball each bedroom window for size, sill height, and smooth operation — that piggybacked opinion is free-to-cheap and worth having.
The thing to decline: permanently-installed escape systems and rope-ladder "installations" sold door-to-door at 20x the hardware price. The $60 ladder in a box has one job and does it.
Ask the tech
- This is a buy-it task more than a hire-it task — but if an inspector or handyman is already at the house: which windows would YOU go out of, and do they open fully?
- Is the sill height and window size in each bedroom actually usable for an adult in the dark?
Red flags you're being upsold
- Permanently-installed escape systems pitched at $1,500+ per window for a standard home — the $60 hook ladder solves the same problem.
- Fear-based home-sprinkler cold calls that start with your kids' bedrooms. Sprinklers are legitimate; that sales channel isn't.
Second opinion time: Any 'life safety package' quote over $500 — price the parts yourself first; they're retail items.
The call
Buy them, stage them, show everyone — thirty minutes total. There's nothing here worth hiring.