Home Safety

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Home Safety Home fire safety equipment starts with detection, and the two alarms do completely different jobs, so a house needs both. A smoke alarm senses particles from a fire. A carbon monoxide alarm senses a colourless, odourless gas produced by any fuel burning appliance, a boiler, a stove, an open fire or a portable gas heater, and nothing about a smoke alarm will detect it. Optical smoke alarms respond faster to the slow smouldering fires that start in furniture and bedding and are the sensible choice for hallways and landings. Placement matters as much as the model: one alarm per floor as a minimum, in the hallway and on the landing, and inside any room where someone sleeps with a door closed. Power supply is the next decision. Mains hard wired alarms with a battery backup suit a new build or a rewire and interlink so that one sounding sets off the rest. Sealed long life battery alarms run up to ten years with no battery changes at all and suit a rental or an older house where running a cable is not practical. Replaceable battery alarms are the simplest to fit and need a fresh 9V cell once a year. Beyond detection, a fire blanket belongs in the kitchen within reach of the hob rather than above it, a small extinguisher covers the hall or the car, and a first aid kit handles the cuts, burns and stings that are far more common than a fire. Every alarm has an expiry date printed on the back, typically seven to ten years from manufacture, and a sensor past that date should be replaced rather than tested. Kidde covers smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms including seven year battery models, and the COSAC combined smoke and CO packs. Safeline supplies the three piece fire safety kit pairing a blanket, an extinguisher and a smoke alarm, with Daewoo and Evolec on optical and mains hard wired smoke alarms, Proplus on fire blankets and Scan on first aid kits. For the batteries these alarms take see Batteries , and for the wider outage range see Power Cut & Emergency