This Sunday, November 1st, the time change will be upon us. Besides getting an extra hour of sleep, (yea) it’s also a great time to change the batteries in your smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. Why wait to be prompted by that middle of the night beep call.

Replace any detectors that are ten years old and older as aging makes it less reliable to detect smoke.

Check the status of your fire extinguishers to make sure they are still usable and don’t need to be replaced. There is no worse scenario than grabbing an extinguisher to fight a fire and finding out it’s not charged. Also make sure you have the correctly rated fire extinguisher for use in your household. An ABC extinguisher covers most fires that may occur.

Class A is for trash, wood, and paper

Class B is for liquids and gases

Class C is for energized electrical sources

Like all other safety equipment, it only works as well as they should if you follow the manufacturers guidelines and don’t compromise the units ability to operate in any fashion. The rule of thumb is one detector in every bedroom and then one in a central area on each story.

Make sure to protect your loved ones and your home.