Charlie:
Mike in Pearland writes, “My smoke alarm went off for five seconds last night, and more than once. The heater’s been on for about a week because of the temperatures. Are they related, should I be concerned? What should I do?”
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Tom:
If the smoke alarms go off and the heater is on, and the smoke alarms continue to go off, and you find smoke in your house, and there’s flames coming out the roof, then be concerned.
Charlie:
Here’s a number to write down.
Tom:
If I didn’t say that, somebody’s like, “Well man, what if it was on fire?”
Charlie:
Okay, well hang on now. You give out your phone number. Mike I want you to write this number down in case you have this problem. You dial 9, then 1, then 1.
Tom:
There you go. If smoke alarms go off randomly, it could be a couple of things. One is, believe it or not, you could have some bugs or spiders or something living in the smoke alarms. They will set them off. What you ought to do is take the covers off and blow them with a little compressed air and clean them up real well. Put them back together, change the batteries while you’re at it, and see what happens. I don’t think it has anything to do with the heater unless the heater’s actually malfunctioning and the furnace is on flames.
Charlie:
Make it, … That actually ties to our next question, because you should check those batteries when you change your clocks. Just make it, when you turn your clocks, when you spring ahead, change the batteries in your smoke detectors.
Tom:
Or whenever. Maybe Christmas day, just at least do it on a day you like.