Remember the batteries with your Easter eggs this weekend
ONE way to burn-off excess chocolate consumption this Sunday is to check all the smoke alarms in your home.
This weekend, Easter Sunday is also the end of daylight saving time in most states plus April Fools’ Day. It is also a very important day for home fire safety with winter right around the corner.
You don’t want to be an April fool and forget your smoke alarms.
Fire dangers are greater in winter months as we use higher-risk equipment such as heaters, electric blankets and candles to keep warm.
Working smoke alarms are vital if you are to keep safe and evacuate should something go wrong. Only working smoke alarms work.
At the very least change all the 9-volt batteries your smoke alarms use with brand new ones, so you are protected with fully-charged detectors looking after you.
It is a very dangerous mistake to forget or deactivate your smoke alarms.
Recently a Melbourne man’s heater set his bedroom alight at about 5am, and the only thing that woke him up was co-incidentally his need to go to the toilet. Without any working smoke alarms, he was extremely lucky to be woken-up for an other reason and could escape.
When asleep our sense of smell is greatly reduced, so we can’t detect smoke and wake-up.
That’s what smoke alarms are for.
Whilst changing the batteries, also clean them with your vacuum cleaner, and dust the ceiling or wall area around the alarms too for good measure.
Dust is a common cause for false alarms, and can also obstruct smoke from drifting towards the alarms’ sensors.
Curious spiders that nest nearby can also cause problems, so clean them out of the way too and spray the vicinity for longer-term house-keeping. (Do not spray the alarms directly.)
Finally, test each alarm by pressing their test buttons to be sure they activate with a loud and strong alarm that’s sure to wake you up.