Check your smoke detectors

[lew]

8 children and 1 adult died in a fire in New York City last night....horrible !!

 

 

Be sure you've got plenty of smoke detectors in your home and always keep good batteries in them. I change mine every 6 months and the best way to remember is to get in the habit of replacing the batteries every time you change your clocks for daylight savings......this weekend !!

 

Have smoke detectors placed all over your house, but especially at the top of any stairway, and also in front of each bedroom door.

 

If you don't have smoke detectors in your home now, go buy some, you can buy 3 smoke detectors for the price of 1 case of beer, a pretty cheap investment to keep your family alive.

[dustink]

Good reminder Lew!

 

With DST starting this weekend, I always put fresh ones in all the detectors when I move the clocks (Spring & Fall)

 

Thanks!

dk

[silveradosheriff]

Thanks Lew!

[Squid]

Good post Lew.

[john vail]

Hey Lew, how many time have you seen people borrow those batteries for something more important like a boom box. Im sure that the radio will give people plenty of warning if needed.

[douG]

Thanks, Lew.

[BFSC Kevin]

yup. thanks lew..

we have something like 5 in our house.

can't stess enough how important they are!!

[Nanook]

Timely reminder Lew, thankyou. May I add that a Carbon Monoxide detector is a good investment too?We had the Fire Marshal check ours out and we are OK...........but....he said to put one in the crawl space as well ,as extra insurance. Makes sense to me !!!!

[setomonkey]

Very good advice (as you'd expect from a retired firefighter), we change the batteries in spring & fall with the clock change, and we also have two CO detectors, one on each floor.

 

Mike

[wuchikubo]

Thanks Lew for the timely reminder. We've got 4 smoke detectors and 3 CO detectors in our home, one of the smoke detectors is linked to the home security as well. That reminds me I have to start teaching my little ones they crawling escape routes soon (now they can remember).

 

Stan

[charlesn]

Hey Lew,

 

Ours run off the house's power and we also have the fire detection option in our home alarm. Should we get a battery operated fire alarm as well just in case?

 

Also, thanks for the reminder, our CO detector probably could use fresh batteries.

 

It's funny, I've lived in this house for 8 years and never cared about any of this stuff, but my little girl now makes all of this stuff a lot more important!

 

Thanks,

Charles

[motv8tr]

Thanks Lew, I have two in my house and I know they work when my nephew cooks . but you're definitely right about changing the batteries every 6 months, thanks for the reminder.

 

Charlesn I personally would not use wired in detectors without back ups...unless they have a battery back up if the power goes out.

 

Maureen

[lew]

Charlesn I personally would not use wired in detectors without back ups...unless they have a battery back up if the power goes out.

 

Maureen

 

Perfect answer Mo

 

Hard wired systems are excellent, but a back-up should be included incase of an all out power failure.

[charlesn]

Thanks! That's what I was thinking.

 

Charles

[fishergirl72]

We just replaced the batteries on our detectors a couple of days ago. We check the batteries every month.

[OhioFisherman]

I just replaced all of my smoke detectors about a month ago, take a good look at yours, they have expiration dates on them.

 

We had a guy not show up for work one morning, not like him at all, no call no show. The boss called his house, no answer, he called the police. All the cars in the drive, no answer at the door, they forced entry and found them all unconscious, something wrong with the furnace allowed co2 to build up. Lucky the call was made they all recovered.

[irishfield]

Perfect answer Mo

 

Hard wired systems are excellent, but a back-up should be included incase of an all out power failure.

 

Exactly Maureen/Lew...many fires these days are when the hydro has gone out and people are using candles. I have 7 pre-wired smoke detectors (2 basement/2 main floor and one outside each kids bedroom upstairs) in our house and a heat detector on the ceiling above each fireplace hooked to the alarm system. Out of the 7 prewired...one on each floor has a battery back up in it.

 

Paul..smoke detectors won't help with the CO2...you need seperate or combo units for that.

 

I have the plug ins in each room there's a fireplace and down in the basement.

Edited March 8, 2007 by irishfield