A timely warning Ethan. Last year our neighbours son was visiting and he visited her neighbours on both sides, which included us. He turned up the following day with brand new smoke detector alarms and CO2 alarms for us all. CO2 alarms for we all have wood burning stoves. I fitted these for everyone to replace and enhance fire and gas leakage safety precautions. The son is a high ranking fire officer in Australia and was concerned that our existing alarms may be not be up to current specification. He obtained the alarms from the local fire service. Who knew? Anyway we all feel considerably safer than previously and are now aware of the situation.

Cheers Concrete

Our eldest daughter works for the Fire Service, her job is fitting smoke alarms for elderly or vulnerable householders: right now she's working from home, preparing lists of people to visit when restrictions ease.

(Not wishing to be pedantic, Concrete, the danger from wood burning (or, indeed any fuel burning appliance) is CO, not CO2: CO is dangerous at far lower concentrations than CO2 and the alarms therefore detect CO only, I think)

Edited by galileo on 25/04/2020 at 18:32

Quite right galileo. My mistake, it is Carbon Monoxide and not Carbon Dioxide that is detected. Apart from the odd moment of forgetfulness whilst using the oven our alarms have never sounded in anger so I do test them fairly regularly. Better safe than sorry.

Cheers Concrete

Easily done old chap! No chance in an alarm going off should you consume too many fizzy drinks! :-)

The alarms in the room where food is prepared regularly gets tested by mistake :-), it's one of those with a built in battery which i haven't (yet) dismantled to see if it is indeed replaceable, it senses CO as well though we only use gas for the boiler and that's situated in the garage anyway.

The detector in the hallway (bungalow) i test every now and again when i think of it, it takes three C2020 batteries, which at first it would get through in months, since i started buying good brand batteries via amazon those batteries have a lifespan in years, when the current batts fail i'll probably update the detector.

Purely out of interest, we followed advice and bought amazon basics AAA batteries in larger packs, they fit most remotes and the cordless mice we use, for the price they have a long reliable life, well worth trying a pack.