Fire Alarms and Carbon Monoxide Detectors

This weekend was definitely an interesting one at my house. My husband and I awoke to the sounds of our upstairs hallway alarm "chirping" at us at 5 am. My husband went to look through the house to make sure that everything was a-ok, then decided it was a dying battery that was setting it off.

Once settled back in, not more then an hour later, we were woken up by our Carbon Monoxide detector in the upstairs hallway, also going off.

That had us up for good, checking the house to make sure that everything was ok. At least my husband was checking, I was with our daughter making sure she was safe - just in case.


We panicked thinking what are the chances that both alarms would go off on the same day.

We decided its important to not take any chances, what with having a toddler in the house and me being 8 months pregnant, so my husband called 911 and reported what happened.


The fire department was here within 2 minutes. I couldn't believe it. As it turns out, it was the firefighters from the same station where momstown Toronto Bloorwest has held our Fire Station tours! It was great to seem them in action.


Here is what we learned:

1. Your child will be the first to show signs of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, which include: nausea, dizziness, and acting out of character.
2. The shelf life of a Carbon Monoxide detector is 5 years, sometimes less.
3. You should vacuum the front of your detector every month.
4. Painting your house can cause a detector to become defective.
5. Checking the batteries in your fire alarm more then once a year is important (we change ours the same time each year, but we will now change the battery 2 x's a year to be safe).
6. You should have a Carbon Monoxide detector on each floor of your house. Say you have a problem in the basement & the alarm goes off, you probably won't hear it on the third floor of your house, and then it could be to late.

As it ends up, we were all safe and there was no cause for alarm, other then the realization that we had to replace the batteries in the fire alarm and get new Carbon Monoxide detectors for the house.


We did this ASAP. It's important to keep you and your family safe.


These tips are something that has now been shared with our message board so all our members can benefit from what we have learned.


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