Keeping Your Smoke Alarms Working

Nothing is sadder than hearing of little children being killed in house fires, unless it’s knowing that there were smoke alarms in the home, but the batteries didn’t work.  These terrible tragedies don’t have to happen, but they do. If someone fails to check the smoke alarms on a regular basis, lives are lost.  It’s up to every homeowner to figure out a way to remember to check smoke alarms  on a regular basis.

Statistics show that it takes under four minutes for a fire to go from tiny flame to raging holocaust. Every home needs at least one working smoke alarm that will detect the first whiff of smoke and sound to alert the family to danger. Every family should have a home evacuation plan, too, so that everyone in the family will know what to do if the alarm goes off. 

You should get in the habit of checking your smoke alarms at least once a month. That way you’ll be able to catch it if one of them isn’t working properly. By making regular alarm checks, you’ll be exposing your family to the sound of the alarm.  Practice what to do when the alarm sounds so that your children become comfortable with both hearing the sound and responding appropriately to it.

Set a date once a year to replace every smoke alarm battery with a brand new one.  You can buy smoke alarms that both plug into electrical current and have batteries. Even with these,  check the batteries. If you would have a power outage and the batteries aren’t working, your fire safety is gone.  You also might want to consider having alarms installed which run off lithium batteries that are guaranteed to run for ten years.

When smoke alarms were first introduced on the market, they were a bit expensive. Now though, when you can purchase a unit that includes a battery for less than $5, there’s no reason to chance having a fire without one. Another good idea is to keep a couple of brand new batteries on hand so that you can replace weak batteries immediately.

Some smoke alarms are very sensitive and go off over every little thing, like a piece of burnt toast.  Homeowners who get annoyed with the false alarms often pull the batteries out of the alarms to make them stop going off.  What a deadly mistake they’re making! Instead of leaving your family without the protection of a smoke alarm, hang tough. You can make it until the next time you’re at a store where you can by a new, less sensitive alarm.

There should be no excuses for not checking smoke alarms, because every problem has a solution.  Take, for example, the case of a small town in Ontario that discovered its senior citizens weren’t checking their alarms because they were afraid to climb up to them. The solution? Each senior was supplied with a pool cue. Using the cue they were able to remain safely on the ground while reaching up to test the alarm. Each senior was also given a log on which to record the dates the alarms were checked. How’s that for creative problem-solving?

Nothing can be more important than making sure your smoke alarms stay in working order. The fact that you can’t remember to check them isn’t a good reason for allowing them die. Tell yourself that when the batteries die, members of your family may follow. Be creative, and find a method of remembering that works for you.