Keep Your Family Safe With Smoke Alarms

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Keep your family safe with Smoke Alarms

Smoke alarms might be the single most important item you purchase for your home. They could just save you and your family’s life. So It’s a no brainer that you should have them in your home.

People don’t think it will happen to them but let me tell you we learned nobody is immune to anything. But we sure can take precautions.

Why are smoke alarms saving lives?

Even though these things seem to go off for any little thing they have saved thousands of lives. Smoke alarms are your first line of security against fire and can reduce the chances of dying in a home fire. As long as you listen to them. Ours kept going off and eventually late at night when one would go off we would simply shut or bedroom door and ignore. We learned this is not a smart idea. We have smoke alarms for a reason. Even though they can be pesky little things they do work. You can read about our kitchen fire by chimichanga here.

Prevention and deterrence should always be on the front of your safety.

What are smoke alarms?

Smoke alarms are an electrical circuit that gets interrupted by particles. A fire will send the particles into the air, these particles then interfere with the electrical circuit and alert a microchip that will set off the alarm.

Types of smoke alarms

There are many options available for smoke alarms and a wide range of costs. A few options are

• Battery operated-

These are inexpensive and easily installed. Usually operate with a 9-volt battery and meet the house code requirements.

• Combination of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms-

Detect carbon monoxide gas from gas stoves, heaters, and other gas appliances. They also detect smoke.

• Ionization-

Ionization smoke alarms respond first to fast flaming fires

• Photoelectric smoke alarms-

Are best suited for living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. This is because these rooms often contain large pieces of furniture which will burn slowly and create more smoldering smoke than flames. These

also are prone to less nuisance in the kitchen.

• Strobe light modules for hearing impaired

Where should smoke alarms be installed?

Smoke alarms are fairly inexpensive and simple to install so it’s best if you have at least one on every level of your home. We highly recommend as soon as you can afford it to place one at least in all the main rooms and outside bedrooms

How to maintain your smoke alarm

To assure that your smoke alarm is doing its job in protecting your family you should:

• Test alarm once a month
• Be kept free of dust
• Replace batteries every 6 months- Lithium batteries will last 8-10 years

For added safety every 6 months when we replaced batteries we would go over a fire safety plan and escape with our children.

How to change out a smoke alarm

We’re going to install this simple FireX smoke alarm it’s just a simple one that is required by code. It takes a 9-volt battery and is about $16 at Home Depot or you can order some here.

If these batteries don’t read at least nine and a half, these things will start chirping.  I’m sure you’ve experienced these when they start chirping in the middle of the night, they’re like a toothache. They always chirp at the wrong time.

I already wired it here is neutral, you just kind of color-coded really the hot, the line. And this right here is what connects all B. The red one is what connects all the smoke alarms together. So when one of them goes off, it sends a signal to all the rest of them. That’s why it’s difficult to tell which, which one is chirping in the problem.

Install the base:

Sometimes they are off just a bit so you just need to work with it. Just make sure not to overdo it.

You just plugin and it snaps together here and it feels little tabs here that go right up, up into the slot there.

Turn it to the right so that these aline with the base. It’s that simple

If you have gas running to your home, like for gas stove, the gas dryer or gas or water heater, then they would require you to have a CO2 for carbon monoxide, smoke detector. So it serves for two purposes, the regular smoke from a fire and the carbon monoxide that may come from the gas.   Those are more expensive like around 50 or $60, still, not much considering it could be a family member’s life.

Watch the video.

Now take action today is the day to make sure your home is safe.

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