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5 Tips For Installing Fire Alarms In Your Home

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If you want to keep your family safe, it is vital that you have fire alarms installed in your home. Fire alarms alert and warn your family if a fire ever occurs in your home and therefore help save your lives. Here are a few tips to help you figure out where to install fire alarms in your home and how to best take care of them.

#1 Fire Alarms Need To Be Upgraded

Fire alarms are not designed to last forever. If the fire alarms in your house are more than ten years old, you should probably consider removing them and installing new fire alarms. Over the years, fire alarms can become defective. Additionally, new technological advances can make the technology inside of your fire alarm obsolete.

#2 Fire Alarms In Your Basements

If you have a basement, make sure that you put at least one fire alarm there. Ideally, your basement fire alarm should be installed on the ceiling and right at the bottom of the stairs going up to the main level of your home. This is the only area of your home where you should install fire alarms on the ceiling instead of about a foot below the ceiling; this is due to the low nature of ceilings in basements and how smoke rises. Air tends to flow upwards, so if a fire ever starts in your basement, this placement increases the chances that you will be alerted to a fire's presence right away.

If you have a large basement that includes a bedroom, bathroom or multiple living rooms, you should place a fire alarm on the ceiling in these rooms as well.

#3 Fire Alarms In Your Kitchen

In your kitchen, you should keep any fire alarms you install away from your cooking appliances so that you don't falsely trigger your fire alarm. Try to have at least eight to ten feet between your kitchen appliances and your kitchen smoke alarm; that way, your fire alarm will catch the real fires but will not go off just because you are sautéing some vegetables.

#4 Fire Alarms In Living & Bedroom Areas Of Your Home

In the living and bedroom areas of your home, your fire alarms should be located about a foot below where the wall meets with the ceiling; this will allow your alarms to be effectively alerted if there is a fire. You should have an alarm installed in each large living area of your home, such as your living room and family room. You should have also have a fire alarm installed inside of each bedroom in your home and in any hallways outside of your main sleeping area.

#5 Fire Alarms & Stairways

If you have stairways in your home, you should have a fire alarm installed near the bottom of each stairway. The alarm should go up so that you are notified of the fire before the smoke fills the upper levels of your home as well.

Once your fire alarms are installed, you are going to need to change the batteries out on a yearly basis. Set a reminder in your phone or mark the date on your calendar so you remember to change out the batteries each year. Talk to a company like Southern Maine Cabling for more information on fire alarm installation.


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