Alarmed.....

Most of you are most likely aware that October is National Fire Prevention Month.  Many of the home improvement stores have fire alarms on sale to help homeowners better protect themselves.  One thing I did not know, is that most fire alarms need to be replaced after 10 years.  This fact was important to me as our home was built in 1997, and with it being 2010, that meant that most likely most of our fire alarms in our home were overdue for replacement.  Also, I am in my third trimester of pregnancy, and my nesting instincts have really kicked in.  Therefore, my husband and I checked all our fire alarms, and found that most of them did indeed need to be replaced. 

Before

Once we determined we needed to replace our smoke alarms, we decided to do a bit of research as to what type of alarm to install.  We quickly learned there are two type of alarms: photoelectric and ionization.  So what is the difference you may ask?  Ionization sensors may respond slightly faster to flaming fires, whereas photoelectric sensors may respond slightly faster to smouldering fires.  Both meet federal and state safety guidelines, and the verdict is still out as to which one is better (from my research).  Therefore, it is recommended to enhance your fire safety prevent, that you install both type of alarms as you can not predict what sort of fire you may have.  We decided to go one step further, and choose some dual purpose fire alarms that also have carbon monoxide detectors.  Therefore, we installed six new fire alarms.  Four are battery powered, and two are hard wired to the house electrical system.  We added additional fire alarms to each of our bedrooms in the interior of the room as none of our bedrooms had fire alarms inside of the room.  It is recommended that you have alarms in your hallway, and then in the inside of the bedroom if you sleep with your doors closed (which we do). 

After (Hallway)

 After (Nursery)

All and all, the replacement units and install of new alarms took a little over a hour.  It was easy work, and I am very pleased to have this knocked off our list.  It is reassuring to know that all the alarms are functional, and will alert us if the need arises.