The Importance of maintaining your Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector

Smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors are two of the most important things inside a family home. These two tools are lifesavers, but only if properly maintained. Every year, approximately 4,000 people die and over 60,000 are injured due to fires and/or carbon monoxide poisoning. Three out of every five fire-related deaths were in a home without a properly maintained fire alarm. 

Having a functioning, maintained smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector in the home raises a person's survival rate by more than half. You may think reaching these staggeringly better safety numbers would entail a number of steps people would need to complete, but it really is as easy as hitting a button and going to the store. 

There are two simple ways to make sure your smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detectors are in good order. 

1 - Test Them Every Month

By making sure the alarm works and is loud enough to wake you, you are one step towards providing your household more safety. Both these appliances have a button on them to press in order to test the alarm.

2 - Change Your Batteries

The most important thing you can do is to change the batteries in your devices. You should change the battery in your smoke alarm once a year and twice a year in your carbon monoxide detector. To make remembering this potentially life-saving activity easy, you should change your batteries at the same time you change your clocks at the beginning and end of daylight savings time. 

While this may seem like overkill, it’s a simple way to gain peace of mind. When it comes right down to it, the price of a new set of batteries is a small investment to make compared to your household’s safety.