Protecting your family from danger is one of your biggest responsibilities as a homeowner, and one of the most important steps
you can take to keep your family safe is installing smoke detector alarms in your home. However, your smoke alarms cannot do anything if they are not working properly. This is why it is recommended by many national fire safety organizations to change the batteries in your smoke alarms when you change your clocks in the spring and the fall for the beginning and the end of Daylight Savings Time. As part of our dedication to your safety, All Seasons Chimney would like to take this time to remind you to check your smoke alarms and to tell you more about the importance of smoke detector alarms.
Why are smoke detector alarms so important?
One of the duties of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is to gather and report the statistics of residential fires, and the numbers on smoke alarms may do the best job of helping you understand why these detectors are so important. According to the NFPA, no smoke alarms were present in more than a third of the deaths caused by residential fires, and one out of five of these deaths were in homes with smoke alarms that did not work because of missing or disconnected batteries. The facts are clear in telling us that working smoke alarms save lives.
Where in my home should I install smoke detector alarms?
The NFPA recommends that you install your alarms on every level of your home, including the attic and the basement. Place the smoke alarms on the ceiling or on the wall as high as possible. You should avoid placing alarms in your kitchen because of the false alarms that can occur when you are cooking. If your kitchen opens up to another room, remember to keep the alarm at least ten feet away from the stove. To protect your family when they are sleeping, you should install smoke alarms in every bedroom as well as outside each sleeping area.
How long do smoke detector alarms typically last?
According to the NFPA, you should replace your smoke alarms when they reach the age of ten years. Not only are they likely to not work very well at this age, but there is new technology in smoke alarm manufacturing that is always developing. To be as safe as possible, you should look for smoke alarms that can be interconnected so that when one alarm sounds, they all sound. This can help save lives even when a fire breaks out overnight in a part of your home that is far away from your sleeping areas.
If you did not check to see if your smoke detector alarms were working when you set your clocks back this fall, All Seasons Chimney would like to remind you to check them now. Contact us for any of your professional chimney maintenance, repair, or installation needs.