Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Where there's smoke ... there's an alarm.

You have smoke alarms.  You replace the batteries when you set the clocks back/forward like the advice tells you to.  So did we.  This one is actually hard wired.

But the other night, when we were having a fire in the fireplace, some pieces of wood that were still burning fell into the trap below our fireplace.  (We have an old house, so this is a thing that can happen.)

WARNING ... THIS BLOG POST IS NOT THAT FUNNY.  IT'S MORE OF A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

Without going into the geography of the whole fireplace/chimney/furnace, I'll just say that the wood down in the trap kept burning.  I don't believe it was a fire hazard, but there was smoke.

We called the fire department.  We didn't take it too seriously, because no smoke alarms were going off.  But we could smell a lot of smoke, and we were starting to be able to see it.

The wonderful fireman arrived, determined the problem, fixed the problem, and didn't even eat the cookies I offered.

SEE ... NOT THAT FUNNY.
 
But the scary part was that our smoke alarms were not working.  They were too old.  So even though we had replaced the batteries, and EVEN THOUGH THEY PASSED THE BEEP TEST WHEN WE TESTED THEM, they didn't work.  The firemen said any alarm older than 5 years should be replaced, because the sensors aren't that good anymore.

Buy new smoke alarms if you think they might be 5 years old.  Don't think that just because they go off when you cook a hamburger that they are still good.



We bought some.  We bought many, actually.  And don't forget a few of these either,
Carbon monoxide detectors.  I like this plug-in kind.

Enjoy your home.  I'll be funny next time.
xo