Have you tested your smoke alarm lately?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I am reminded by the factory smoke thread to NAG you all…

Have you tested your smoke alarm, your CO alarm and your circuit breakers recently?

No this is not off topic!.

2

Thank-you, David.

3

I Australia it is now LAW to have a working smoke alarm installed

4

No need for manual checks here. All detectors are hardwired and self-test whenever power is restored.

We’ve already had more than ten tests this week alone, half of today, Friday and Saturday yet to go.

Thanks for the reminder though.

:slight_smile:

5

I have to do the button test on mine. The wife has been doing the cooking lately. [:O]

6

After the fire we had in January,…YOU BET!!![:0]

And NO, this is not off topic! You RR could burn, or worse, you could go to that great trainyard in the sky! [angel]

7

I don’t have to test mine. Dang thing goes off every time I cook.[(-D]

8

Thinks for the heads up. Mine is hardwired in the house and the security company notifies when there is a problem. But I do have 18 others that I have to hand test. I do that every six months.
Neal

9

I’m gonna keep nagging for the weekend … then I’ll be quiet… for a bit.
I want to remind as many people as possible.
Someone else can always bump this to page 1 for me…

10

Nope, haven’t tested them. Well, that’s not exactly true. Mine are battery-powered and I change the batteries when we change to and from standard time. I test each unit when I change the battery, so they DO get tested twice a year.

I’m not being cavalier about the smoke detectors, though. I have other heat-sensing devices in every room (ceiling temp hits 110 degrees F and the GONGS go off! Ouch!). In addition, I have heat sensors on my monitored-alarm system.

God forbid I ever have a fire! With all these alarms going off, it’ll sound like a war broke out in the neighborhood. Probably get arrested for disturbing the peace!! LOL

But not eveyone is as anally-retentive as I am, so this is a good thread to remind everyone with. Thanks.

Darrell, who uses the kitchen smoke detector as a cooking timer, and quiet…for now

11

Sometimes, no good deed goes unpunished. A couple of years ago, new to the place and its integrated alarm system, I dutifully tested the smoke alarm closest to the master bedroom. While the alarm did its screech, so the siren began to do its “weep, weep, weep”, and “dee-der, dee-der”, and all sorts of horrendous noises. Feeling like the smelly end of the horse, I went to the main panel and reset the alarm just as the phone rang and the monitoring agent asked if we needed help? I replied that I probably did, but not with a fire. [sigh]

12

My smoke detector got in a fight with the floor, and the floor won. Fortunately, the home is made entirely of concrete, which is the reason I have not replaced the smoke detector in 3 years, but as of your reminder, it’s probably an omen that one should re-installed.

Thanks.

13

Our fire departments suggest that we change the batteries every time that we change the clocks. Now I need some devices that will run on the partially used 9V batteries.
The other chore that I do at that time is flip the circuit breakers. A fellow on TV said that they should be done every month, but twice a year was probably the best you could expect. If you do it at clock change time, you can go and reset all the clocks and VCRs afterwards, because you’d do it anyways.