Every fall and spring, we change our clocks for daylight saving time, and millions of us follow a long-standing safety ritual: Climb a step stool and check or swap the batteries in our smoke alarms.
Good for you. But if that’s all you do, you may be feeling a lot safer than you actually are.
Here’s why it matters.
According to a 2019 National Fire Protection Association report, almost 3 in 5 home fire deaths from 2012 to 2016 happened in homes with no smoke alarms or with alarms that didn’t work. Meanwhile, a working alarm cuts your risk of dying in a home fire roughly in half, according to the American Red Cross.
A good alarm costs as little as $6. A bad one — or a missing one — can cost everything.
Here are six mistakes that turn a smoke alarm into a plastic ceiling ornament, and how to fix each one.
1. Your alarm is past its expiration date
Take each smoke alarm down and flip it over. Somewhere on the back is a manufacture date.
If that date is 10 years ago or more, the whole unit needs to go. The U.S. Fire Administration says smoke alarms should be replaced 10 years from the date they were made, because they don’t last forever.
That goes for hardwired alarms, too. Many were installed when the house was built or remodeled and haven’t been looked at since. If your kitchen remodel was during the Bush administration, your alarms probably are, too.
Pro tip: When you install a new one, write the replacement date on it in marker. Future you will be grateful.
2. You’re relying on only one type of sensor
There are two main kinds of smoke alarms, and they’re good at different things.
According to the U.S. Fire Administration, ionization alarms tend to react faster to fast, flaming fires, while photoelectric alarms tend to react faster to slow, smoldering ones — think a cigarette in a couch cushion. Testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found the same pattern.
You don’t know which kind of fire you’ll have, so the agency recommends having both types in your home or buying dual-sensor alarms that contain both.
The price difference is small. The fire administration lists basic ionization or photoelectric alarms at $6 and up, and dual-sensor models at $24 and up.
3. You don’t have enough of them
One alarm in the hallway isn’t enough. The U.S. Fire Administration recommends alarms:
- Inside each bedroom. Not just in the hallway outside it.
- Outside each sleeping area. That hallway alarm still counts — it’s just not the only one you need.
- On every level of the house, including the basement.
Even better, the agency says to choose interconnected alarms, so when one goes off, they all go off. A basement alarm does you no good if it’s the only one screaming about a fire two floors below your bedroom.
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4. You don’t have a carbon monoxide alarm
A smoke alarm won’t warn you about carbon monoxide (CO), the odorless gas that comes from furnaces, space heaters, fireplaces, generators and cars. You need a separate CO alarm or a combination unit.
This is no small thing. Carbon monoxide that has nothing to do with fires kills more than 400 people in the U.S. each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and sends more than 100,000 to the emergency room.
The U.S. Fire Administration says each sleeping area should have a CO alarm centrally placed just outside it, and every floor of the house needs one, too.
Two details people miss: The CDC says to check CO alarm batteries when you change your clocks, and to swap out the detector itself every five years, or sooner if the maker says so. That’s a shorter clock than for smoke alarms.
5. You pulled the battery to stop the beeping
We’ve all been there. The bacon hits the pan, the alarm goes off and someone yanks the battery to make it stop. Then it never goes back in.
According to a 2019 National Fire Protection Association report, alarms are often disabled because of nuisance alarms, cooking is a big culprit, and battery problems were the most common reason alarms that should have worked didn’t.
The U.S. Fire Administration is blunt about it: Pull the battery, or let it die, and you might as well not own the alarm.
The fixes:
- Test every alarm monthly. Push the button. It takes seconds.
- Move, don’t disable. If an alarm near the kitchen keeps going off, it may be too close to the stove.
- Consider sealed 10-year models. The fire administration notes some alarms come with nonreplaceable 10-year lithium batteries, which means no battery to pull or forget.
6. You’re paying for help you can get free
If you can’t afford new alarms, can’t climb a ladder or simply don’t want to deal with it, you may not have to.
The American Red Cross installs free smoke alarms through its Sound the Alarm program. You can request a home fire safety visit here by entering your ZIP code to reach your local chapter.
Since the campaign began, the Red Cross says it has installed more than 3.2 million alarms and saved more than 2,500 lives.
The U.S. Fire Administration adds that some local fire departments will install battery-operated alarms at no cost. Call your fire department’s nonemergency number and ask.
And if someone in your home is deaf or hard of hearing, standard alarms may not wake them. The fire administration says to use alarms with a strobe light or vibrating pad, and it suggests a pillow or bed shaker that kicks on when the alarm sounds.
Your 15-minute to-do list
When you change your clocks, do this instead of just swapping batteries:
- Check the date on every alarm. Replace anything 10 or more years old.
- Count your alarms. Every bedroom, outside every sleeping area, every level.
- Add CO protection if you don’t have it.
- Test everything. Then put a monthly reminder on your phone.
While you’re thinking about protecting your home, here are 7 fall chores that can prevent a $30,000 burst-pipe claim.
Total cost: a few bucks and a few minutes. Considering what’s at stake, that’s the best deal you’ll get all year.
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