FALL BACK THIS WEEKEND AND CHECK YOUR SMOKE ALARM

For years we have heard that when you change your clocks you also need to change your smoke alarm battery. The catchy message "Change your clock - change your smoke alarm battery" has been one of the most effective public education campaigns that the fire service has ever came up with. Yet since 1998 it hasn't really matched what we do here in Oregon. In 1998 Oregon State law has required that all ionization type smoke alarms that receive their power from a battery are to have a battery that is capable of powering your smoke alarm for ten years without being replaced. Smoke alarm manufacturers have worked to make their devices compliant with the Oregon law and have designed smoke alarms that are meant to work only with these long life batteries that are typically a lithium power cell. If you replace these long life batteries with the standard, and often cheaper, alkaline battery you actually void the warranty of the smoke alarm and it may not function as it was intended to work. This is obviously a potentially dangerous situation for your family, so what we are suggesting this year is that when you set your clocks back one hour that you also check your smoke alarm to make sure that it works. This is usually a simple process where you find the test button on the alarm and push it until you hear the "beeping" sound that signals you that the alarm is working like it's supposed to.

This should work for most smoke alarms in Oregon that receive their power from a battery. Notice that we said most, there are a few exceptions to this however. First is that if the smoke alarm is hard wired into the building it is not required to have a long life battery as a back up power source and a standard alkaline battery will suffice; it is a good idea however to replace this back up battery twice a year when you change your clock. The second situation would be if your battery operated smoke alarm is not an ionization type; ionization is a term used to describe how your smoke alarm will detect smoke and there are usually two types - one being ionization and the other being photo electric. A photo electric type of smoke alarm typically will receive power from a lithium type power cell and will drain the charge from an alkaline battery rather quickly. The smoke alarm will say somewhere either on the face of the alarm, or on a label inside, if it is a photo electric or an ionization type.

So are you confused yet? It basically boils down to asking yourself a few questions?

1. Is your smoke alarm over ten years old? If it is, replace it, regardless of the type of smoke alarm.

2. Do you have an ionization type smoke alarm that is battery operated? If so then you shouldn't need to make any changes to the alarm, just test it to make sure that the alarm works by using the test button. Never use a candle, match, or other burning material to test the alarm.

3. Do you have a smoke alarm that is hard wired to your home's electrical power? If you do, replace the back up battery with a new battery.

It's always a good idea to have a family fire drill when you test your smoke alarm. Make sure the kids know what the sound of the smoke alarm in your home is and that it's not something they should be afraid of. Everyone should practice two ways out of their home and finding their safe family meeting place outside the home and always reinforce that once we escape a fire that we never go back into the home for anything.