Smoke Alarm

Smoke Detectors

firealarm More than 1/2 of all home fires happen at night when people are sleeping. Smoke Detectors can reduce your chances of dying in a fire by half. Here are a few tips about smoke detectors.

Smoke Detectors should be placed in every level of your home and each sleeping area should have its own smoke detector.
Smoke detectors should be mounted high, since smoke and heat rise.
Smoke detectors need to be tested once per month.
Use a broom handle to check smoke detectors that may be up too high to manually press.
Smoke detector batteries need to be replaced twice each year, even if they have not been used!
A good time to change batteries is when the time changes each year.
NFPA, (National Fire Protection Association) suggests replacing the entire smoke detector unit every 10 years.
There are special smoke detectors for the hearing impaired that flash a strobe light and produce a sonic alarm only animals and some hearing impaired individuals can distinguish.
Never take the batteries out of your smoke detector for other household items. Over half of the home fires today that have working smoke detectors, did not have batteries.
When a smoke detector starts an annoying beeping sound every few minutes, it is trying to tell you the batteries are going dead.