It’s that time of year again. British Summer Time ends this weekend at 2am on Sunday 30th October 2011. This year though, we’d like you to also check your smoke alarm when you turn back the clocks.
Whether you’ll be turning back the clocks in your home on Saturday night or Sunday morning, take a moment to test your smoke alarms. You may have already seen the government’s Fire Kills campaign urging you to do the same. Their hard-hitting TV adverts show a melting clock this year and you may have seen posters depicting fire damaged clocks.
You are more than four times more likely to die in a fire if you do not have a working smoke alarm so it’s really important to regularly test your smoke alarms and ensure they are working optimally.
We’ve spoken about testing your smoke alarms in this blog in the past and have previously suggested a number of ways to help you remember to test your smoke alarm. You could:
- Test your smoke alarm every year on your birthday. It may not seem like the most fun thing to do on your special day but it will only take a few minutes and it could ensure you live to see your next birthday.
- Test your smoke detectors on New Year’s Day. You might be feeling worse for wear but you’ll be thankful when you live to see another year go by.
Using the latest suggestion of testing your smoke alarm when the clock’s change means you are testing your detectors twice a year. If there is a problem with your detector you’ll double your chances of finding it.
In any case, getting into a routine on whichever day works best for you and your family will help save lives, it’s all about getting into the habit of testing your smoke alarms regularly.
We also recommend that you change the batteries on the same day every year – don’t wait until your alarm starts annoyingly beeping at you!
You could even get a 10 year life smoke alarm so you’ll only need to change your smoke alarm unit once every decade (you will still need to test your alarm once a year though). This option can work out to be very cost-effective too even if the initial cost is slightly more as you won’t need to buy batteries every year.
