Test your smoke alarm!

[LCHIEN]

I bought 2 new alarms, dual sensor, with 10 year battery so I should be set until I'm 79 Y.O.

I have the two old ones, 11 years old that are apparently still operating but the sensors are expired.

They have a break tab and switch on the back that is a permanent disable for the unit so that after being removed from service the EOL beep alarm won't try to go off.

I was just thinking, I could send these for recycling (I think the local hardware retail giants have bins for that) and pictured a facility with boxes of hundreds of these stacked up for recycling.
If I did not disable it, they could be looking at bins with 100's of these things, many of them beeping!

That would drive you nuts.

[Gbotha]

My kitchen 10 year alarm keeps going off for no reason. After 1 year. so I swapped it with another from bedroom. 1 year later THAT one starts going off. Research blames the a/c floor vent, just below it. Since I closed the vent, no problem.

[LCHIEN]

Lowes had no recycle bin for smoke detectors but did have a bin for devices with lithium batteries so i dropped it in there.

[Slik Geek]

On the dangers of CO...

A coworker drove to work one cold winter morning, not knowing the vehicle exhaust had a leak that somehow resulted in significant CO into the vehicle cabin. When she arrived at work, she complained that she wasn't feeling well (I can't remember the specific symptoms). Minutes later, despite being in fresh air now, she collapsed and had a seizure. She came out okay, after an ambulance trip to the hospital, but it was a scary reminder of the power of CO - even after escaping to fresh air.

A single mom I knew, a few decades ago, with three kids (9 - 15 years old) were exhibiting flu-like symptoms, overall feeling poorly. They suffered with it for a couple days, and somehow discovered that their furnace heat exchanger had failed and was allowing CO to permeate the house (perhaps because they went to grandmas so she could help care for them and then quickly felt better??) The story could have ended with them all dying and being found the next day when they didn't respond.

A guy I know started feeling sick at work, as did coworkers. They discovered the propane-fueled forklift wasn't operating properly and was poisoning them with CO.