At the beach this week and smoke detector in rental house starting chirping every now and then. This sort of thing always happens to me. I unscrewed the detector from its base on the wall and was going to look for a battery in owners junk drawer when I noticed the build date of Jan 2004 and a warning to replace in 10 years so this detector was 5 years out of date. There was another detector in another hall way and it was older than the first. I reported this to rental agency who said they could not replace on their own until contacting owner to authorize the expense. ??? They are literally playing with fire. I worked for an electrical and electronics manufacturer at one time. They made smoke detectors along with a million other things. The product mgr for smoke detectors traveled with his own personal smoke detector. Not a bad idea considering:
From the NFPA:
From the NFPA:
- Smoke alarms provide an early warning of a fire, giving people additional time to escape.
- Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a reported home fire in half.
- Almost three in every five home-fire deaths result from fires in homes with no smoke alarms (40%) or no working smoke alarms (17%).
- When smoke alarms fail to operate, it is usually because batteries are missing, disconnected, or dead. Dead batteries caused one-quarter (25%)of the smoke alarm failures.