How-to guide
How to Test Smoke Alarms and When to Replace Them
Test, date-check and count your smoke alarms, and know when a working alarm still needs replacing.
YOU NEED: a sturdy step stool or step ladder on a level floor, with someone steadying it. Never stand on a chair, a bed or other furniture. For high ceilings, press the test button from the floor with a broom handle, or use the remote test button if your alarms have one, rather than climbing. A helper in another room listens for the other alarms.
- Press and hold the test button until it sounds. It should be loud enough to be unpleasant.
- Check whether the others sound too. Interconnected alarms all go off together — that is what wakes people at the far end of the house.
- Find the date. Every alarm has a manufacture date printed on the back. Ten years from that date, it gets replaced, working or not. The sensor degrades.
- Count your coverage. One inside every bedroom, one outside each sleeping area, and at least one on every level including the basement.
Alabama’s residential fire death rate runs about a third above the national average. Working, interconnected alarms are the single cheapest thing that moves that number.
Call us if: your alarms are not interconnected, are battery-only in a house that could support hardwired, or chirp on a circuit that also does other things. We also install low-frequency sounders for hard-of-hearing residents, which wake people standard alarms do not.