North Salt Lake City, UT – Daylight saving time begins this weekend. That means we lose an hour, but it also means we should replace the batteries in our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
One Utah family found out that’s not all you need to do to keep your detectors in working order. Early Friday morning, one of Sarah Tompkins’ carbon monoxide detectors starting going off and wouldn’t stop.
I just kept hitting this little button right here to try and reset it and stop it, she said.
The family called the fire department that came out and told them there was no leak and the batteries were fine, but the detector itself had expired.
We obviously did not know that and had been replacing the batteries like you should during Daylight Saving Time and so we just thought that we were doing what we were supposed to do and instead were also supposed to replace the detectors every so often as well, she said.
Jason Asay, with the Salt Lake Fire Department said the both smoke and carbon monoxide detectors have a life expectancy. Each manufacturer is different when it comes to shelf life, but most will have details on the back on what to be aware of.
The chirps will be different depending on whether the smoke or carbon monoxide detector is alerting people to danger or a different chirp for when the batteries need to be replaced and then there’s a different chirp as to when the unit is expired and the whole unit needs to be replaced, said Asay.
Tompkins, who is married to a staff member at ABC4 says the family is erring on the side of safety and plans to replace not one but all detectors in their home.
If we’re going to replace one we’re going to replace all so that this doesn’t happen again and we know they’re new, they work, she said.