Your smoke alarm is not decoration: 8 free fixes for the minutes a house fire gives you
Eight free fixes for a house that has to warn you in time: test the alarms you already own and learn their four sounds, read the date on the back, put one in every bedroom, add the carbon monoxide alarm, close the bedroom doors at night, and take the risk out of the hob, the dryer and the sockets.
A fire is faster than it used to be. The furnishings, the open-plan layouts and the lightweight materials in a modern home let flames spread and turn toxic much more quickly than the advice most of us grew up with assumed, which is why the researcher who has spent a decade running full-scale house fires now tells people that his first piece of advice is simply to sleep with the bedroom door closed. 1 From the moment an alarm sounds you may have as little as two minutes before a room is no longer survivable, 2 and in those two minutes almost nothing depends on luck. It depends on whether the alarm above your head can still hear smoke, whether it is in the room you are sleeping in, and what you have already done with the doors, the hob, the dryer and the sockets.
Where a working smoke alarm is present, NFPA's latest research puts the reduction in the risk of dying in a home fire at about 60 per cent, and roughly three out of five fire deaths happen in homes with no alarm at all or none that works. 3 That is what makes the alarm the highest-value object in the house, and it is why the first four fixes below are about the alarms you already own: testing them, dating them, placing them, and adding the one that watches the gas you cannot smell. The last four are about the ways an ordinary home starts burning in the first place.
1. Test every alarm in the house this week, and learn its four sounds
Steps
- Walk the house and press the test button on every alarm you find. Hold it until you hear the loud beep, beep, beep: that is the sign it is working. Do this once a month, every month. 23
- If nothing sounds, change the battery. If the unit is more than ten years old, replace the whole unit rather than the battery. 3
- Learn the four signals, because they mean four different things. Three loud beeps mean smoke or fire. Four loud beeps mean carbon monoxide. One chirp every 30 or 60 seconds means the battery is low. A chirp that carries on after a fresh battery means the alarm has reached the end of its life and the unit must be replaced. 34
- Decide now what you will do if one sounds for real: get out, call the fire service, and stay out. 3
Why it works: A smoke alarm that has a dead or missing battery is the same as having no smoke alarm at all, and the only way to know which of those two houses you live in is to press the button. 2 The alarm is what turns a fire that starts while you are asleep into a decision you get to make, which matters more than it used to: you may have less than two minutes to get everyone out. 2
Avoid this mistake: The alarm nobody tests is usually the alarm nobody can hear, and the test that counts is the one you can hear from the bedroom with the door shut. Tie the monthly test to something that already happens on the same date, so it stops being a thing you mean to do. And test with the button rather than with a candle or a match: the button is the test, and a real flame near a plastic alarm is its own small fire.
2. Read the date on the back, and clear the dust out of the vents
Steps
- Twist the alarm off its base, turn it over and find the manufacture date printed on the back. Write the year it expires, ten years after that date, somewhere you will see it. 23
- Twice a year, run the soft brush attachment of the vacuum cleaner around the casing and across the vents, gently, to lift the dust, cobwebs and dead insects out. 5
- Wipe the outside with a dry or barely damp cloth. Do not spray cleaner onto the alarm, and do not open the case or poke anything into the slots. Check the manufacturer's instructions before doing anything beyond the outside. 5
- Press the test button once more when you have finished, and put the alarm back on its base. 5
- If it runs on a disposable 9-volt battery, or it is hardwired with a backup battery, change that battery at least once a year. 2
Why it works: An alarm senses changes in the air around it, so anything sitting in the sensing chamber interferes with what it can read. 5 Dust is also one of the two reasons alarms cry wolf: a dirty chamber produces nuisance alarms, and nuisance alarms are how batteries end up in a drawer. 5 The ten-year rule is not about the battery at all: the sensor itself degrades with age, which is why the alarm is replaced on its manufacture date rather than when it starts misbehaving. 2
Avoid this mistake: When an old alarm starts chirping every minute, the temptation is to take the battery out and deal with it later. That chirp is the alarm telling you it can no longer do its job: if it continues after a new battery, replace the unit. 34 Nothing else in this piece costs money, and this is the one place it might: a battery, or a unit at the end of its ten years. If that is the reason the job keeps sliding, ask your local fire service first, because many departments supply alarms free of charge. 2
3. Put an alarm inside every bedroom and one outside each sleeping area
Steps
- Count the rooms people sleep in. There should be an alarm inside each one, and another outside each separate sleeping area, such as the hallway between the bedrooms. 23
- Add one on every level of the home, including the basement. 3
- Fix the position of each one: on the ceiling or high on a wall, and at least ten feet, or three metres, from the stove. Where the ceiling shape gives you a choice, check the manufacturer's instructions for that model. 3
- If you are replacing alarms anyway, choose interconnected ones, so that when one sounds they all sound. Hardwired installation is an electrician's job. 23
Why it works: Smoke rises, so an alarm on the ceiling or high on a wall meets it first. 3 The alarm in the hallway outside the bedrooms is the one that gives the whole household its warning, while the alarm inside the bedroom is the one that wakes the person who would otherwise sleep through a fire starting in the next room. 3 Interconnection matters for the same reason: a fire that starts in the basement still has to reach the person asleep on the top floor in time. 3
Avoid this mistake: Most people meet their smoke alarm only when the toaster sets it off, and that is the moment the battery comes out. Do not do it. Open a window or a door and press the hush button, wave a towel at the alarm to clear the air, or move the whole alarm several feet further from the kitchen. Disabling a smoke alarm or removing its battery can be a deadly mistake. 2 If your alarm objects to toast regularly, it is sitting too close to the kitchen, and the alarms designed to be less bothered by cooking are the photoelectric and multi-criteria types. 3
4. Add the alarm that watches the gas you cannot smell
Steps
- Fit a carbon monoxide alarm near every sleeping area in the house, battery-operated or with a battery backup. 6
- Test its batteries when you change the clocks in spring and autumn, and replace the unit as the manufacturer instructs or every five years, whichever comes first. Set a reminder when you install it. 6
- Take the sources off the list while you are at it: never heat the house with a gas oven, never burn charcoal indoors, never use a camp stove or a chemical heater indoors, keep a generator outside and more than 20 feet from windows, doors and vents, have the chimney checked or cleaned every year, and never run a car or truck inside a garage attached to the house. 6
- Teach the four-beep signal to everyone in the house, because four beeps is a different emergency from three: it means get outside, call the fire service and stay out. 4
Why it works: Carbon monoxide is colourless and odourless, so there is nothing to notice and nothing to smell; an alarm is the only warning that exists. 6 It kills more than 400 people a year in the United States, sends more than 100,000 to emergency departments and hospitalises more than 14,000, and the symptoms it produces look like flu: headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, chest pain and confusion. 6 People who are asleep, or who have been drinking, can die from it before they feel anything at all, which is why the alarm belongs beside the beds rather than in the room with the boiler. 6 The sources list is the other half of the fix: almost every one of those deaths is a fuel-burning appliance or engine running where it should not. 6
Avoid this mistake: Four beeps is not a smoke alarm problem to be silenced while you look for the source. An alarm that senses carbon monoxide means leaving the building and calling the fire service from outside. 4 The second mistake is treating a carbon monoxide alarm as a substitute for a smoke alarm: they are two different hazards and two different devices, and a combined unit only covers both if the label says so. 6
5. Close the bedroom doors before you sleep
Steps
- Make closing every bedroom door the last thing you do before you get into bed, in every room people sleep in. 1
- Close the children's doors after you have said goodnight, rather than leaving them open so you can hear. 1
- If smoke appears while you are in a room, shut the door and stay behind it, and put something along the bottom if you can. 1
- On the way out of the house, close doors behind you. 1
Why it works: In full-scale experiments run by the fire safety research institute at UL, the rooms with the door open reached more than 1,000°F while the rooms with the door closed stayed below 100°F, and the carbon monoxide reading in the open room reached about 10,000 parts per million against roughly 100 in the closed one. 1 The researcher behind that work puts it plainly: with the door closed, the fire has less oxygen to burn and stays where it is, which gives everyone else in the house longer to get out. 1 For a parent, this is the fix that protects the thing you cannot reach: if smoke cuts off the hallway, a door you already closed is a barrier you put in place hours earlier. 1
Avoid this mistake: A closed door delays a fire; it does not replace a plan. It buys minutes only if something woke you in the first place, so it sits alongside a tested alarm and two ways out of the house rather than instead of them. 1 The commonest version of this mistake is the parent who sleeps with their own door shut and leaves the children's doors open, on the assumption that the child needs to hear them, when the closed door is exactly what gives a child that time. 1
6. Keep a lid within reach of the hob
Steps
- While you cook, stay in the kitchen, wear close-fitting sleeves, and turn pan handles inwards so they cannot be caught. 7
- Keep the area around the hob clear, and keep one lid that fits your largest pan within arm's reach, not in a cupboard across the room. 7
- If oil or fat catches fire, turn off the heat and slide the lid over the flames to smother them. Leave the lid in place until the pan is completely cool, and never carry the pan outside. 7
- Never use water or flour on a cooking fire, and do not try to move the pan. For other food fires, use baking soda. 78
- For a fire in the oven or the microwave, leave the door shut and turn the appliance off; the lack of oxygen inside will smother it. If it does not die down, call the fire service and get everyone out. 8
Why it works: Cooking is the single largest cause of home fires, involved in close to half of them, and unattended cooking is the leading cause of the cooking fires themselves. 9 A pan of hot oil burns at its surface, and water thrown at it flashes into steam and throws burning oil up and out of the pan, which is how a small pan fire becomes a kitchen fire. 8 A lid does the opposite: it removes the oxygen the flames are feeding on, and keeps the heat where it started. 7
Avoid this mistake: The instinct to carry the pan to the sink is the one to override, because a moving pan spreads burning oil along the route you are walking. 7 The second is throwing water or flour at it, both of which make it worse. The third is the left-in-place frying pan from lunch: a dirty hob, a tea towel resting on the edge and a pan of oil heating while you answer the door are all the same fix, done in advance.
7. Empty the lint filter before every load
Steps
- Pull the lint screen out of the dryer and clear it before you start a load, and again if the lint is thick; the minimum is weekly, and more often if you run several loads a day. 10
- Once a year, switch the power off at the panel, pull the machine away from the wall and disconnect the vent. Vacuum lint and debris out of both ends of the duct with the crevice tool. 1011
- While you are back there, look at the duct itself. A sagging accordion-style plastic duct traps lint in its ridges; rigid metal has smooth walls that let air out freely, and where you need to join sections, foil tape is better than screws, which give lint something to catch on. 10
- Tighten any connection the vibration has worked loose, and then run the dryer only when someone is at home and awake. 910
Why it works: Lint, dust and fibres are the items most often ignited in a dryer, and inadequate cleaning is the leading cause of those fires. 10 A blocked vent also traps heat and damp inside the machine, which is why the first sign people notice is clothes taking longer to dry. 10 The NFPA figures quoted by Good Housekeeping put home fires involving dryers and washing machines at nearly 16,000 a year, which is a large number for an appliance none of us watch while it works. 9
Avoid this mistake: The dryer is the appliance people run while they sleep or while they are out, and that is precisely when a fire in it becomes a fire in the house. The expert advice is to start a load only when someone is there to notice. 9 The other mistake is believing the filter is the whole job: a clean screen with a lint-packed duct behind it is a clean-looking dryer that is still waiting to catch.
8. Count what is plugged into each socket
Steps
- Walk the house and look for the patterns that cause the fires: a power strip plugged into another power strip, an extension cord running under a rug or across a doorway, a space heater or hair dryer on a strip or an extension cord, a plug that wobbles or falls out of its socket, and a plug or faceplate that is warm or discoloured. 12
- Plug portable heaters straight into a wall outlet and nowhere else, and unplug them when you leave the room or go to bed. 912
- Route cords along the wall rather than under anything, split high-draw appliances such as a dryer and a straightener across different outlets, and unplug the small countertop appliances you are not using. 912
- Write down anything that a licensed electrician needs to see: a loose outlet, a warm plug, a scorched faceplate, or a breaker that keeps tripping. 12
Why it works: Every connection between the socket and the appliance is another point of resistance, and resistance is heat; daisy-chained strips multiply those points, and a space heater runs a circuit at close to its full capacity for hours. 12 A cord hidden under a rug is pressed, flexed and walked on until its insulation frays, and the spark arrives directly above something that burns well. 12 A plug that falls out is meeting a socket that overheats, which is why electricians replace those outlets rather than putting up with them. 12
Avoid this mistake: This is the fix where the free part ends at the diagnosis. Nothing above costs anything to check and most of it costs nothing to correct, but a loose outlet, a hidden junction inside a wall, or a breaker that keeps tripping is a job for a licensed electrician rather than a weekend of rewiring. 12 And never answer a tripping breaker by fitting a larger one: the breaker is matched to the wire, and the wire is what will melt. 12
Done in order, the eight take one evening and one weekend: tonight, press the test button on every alarm and close the bedroom doors; this week, read the dates on the backs, vacuum the vents, fit a carbon monoxide alarm beside the beds, and count what is plugged into each socket; then let the last three become part of cooking, laundry and plugging something in. None of it needs a shopping trip, and the whole of it moves the odds in a house that will be closed up and darker every week from now until spring.
Three jobs are not yours to finish. If a room people sleep in has no alarm, or a tenant's house has none at all, that belongs to the landlord, and local fire services often install alarms free for householders who ask. 2 A hardwired alarm, a warm socket, or a breaker that keeps tripping belongs to an electrician. 12 A chimney and any gas appliance that has not been serviced belongs to a qualified technician, once a year. 6
Then there is the one line worth carrying out of all of it. When an alarm sounds, get out, call the fire service, and stay out. 3 Everything above exists to give you those two minutes, and nothing inside a burning house is worth spending them on.
References
- 1Close Before You Doze
fsri.org
- 2Smoke Alarms
usfa.fema.gov
- 3Learn More About Smoke Alarms
nfpa.org
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7Recipe for Safer Cooking
cpsc.gov
- 8How to Put Out Every Kind of Kitchen Fire
lifehacker.com
- 9Appliances You Should Never Leave Running Unattended, Per Experts
goodhousekeeping.com
- 10This is the one dryer mistake you need to avoid
goodhousekeeping.com
- 115 Things in Your Home You Need to Do ASAP
goodhousekeeping.com
- 12Electricians Say You Should Never Do These Things at Home
goodhousekeeping.com
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