My wife says that if I write about it, it usually happens…now for my smoke detector story.  The other night at about 2:00 a.m. we were awaken by the smoke detectors going off in the house.  Ours is a one-story house and by looking out the bedroom door we could clearly see that there was no smoke in the house. (Thanks, in no small part, to the fact that you can read a book at night because of the number of “night lights” my wife keeps on all night throughout the house.)  Our detectors are wired in to the house electrical current so all the detectors were “singing”; we identified the “lead singer”, i.e., the detector that was in alarm by its flashing red light.

Next step—which I set about doing while thinking about the number of times I’d done this while sleepy homeowners watched after calling 911 because their smoke alarm had gone off with no smoke present—was to retrieve the ladder from the garage so I could reach the detector.  Then using the vacuum cleaner—which my wife had gotten out, we’re such a team at 2:00 a.m.!—I vacuumed all the of the entry points around the detector to remove any accumulated dust.  Then I reversed the cleaner’s process and blew air through the detector to clear any dust that was in the ionization chamber—the likely culprit for this morning’s alarm.

I hooked the detector back up to the electrical supply and—PRESTO—it went off again!  I left it unhooked and we went back to sleep, confident that the other four detectors were on the job, knowing that a trip to Lowe’s to buy a replacement detector had just been added to tomorrow’s TODO list.  (Just in case you forget this story when it happens to you, the instructions are on the back of the detectors.  Just read and follow.)

[CO] detector, while excellent in its own right because CO is a deadly gas produced by fire, does not count for the purposes of our survey.)

You and your family need—no make that MUST HAVE—the protection of photoelectric smoke detectors in addition to the ionization type and the CO detectors.  (I’ll make CO detectors a topic for a future blog at this site.)  The ionization technology detectors, the most widely installed by homebuilders and the most numerous available for purchase in stores, do not detect the smoke particles of smoldering fires as quickly as does the photoelectric smoke detector. 

Smoldering fires, the kind of fire that starts in furniture cushions or a cluttered laundry room or bedding material, are the kinds of fires that kill people in their sleep.  You need the protection of both kinds of smoke detectors, but right now you probably only have one…or maybe you went out and bought the photoelectric model after reading last week’s missive.  Smart move, very smart!