·
Keep electrical appliances and cords in good working order and do
not overload electrical circuits.
·
Keep stoves, fireplaces, chimneys, and barbecue grills grease-free and
make sure they are properly installed away from combustible materials.
·
Keep portable heaters and open flames such as candles away from com-
bustible materials.
·
Do not allow rubbish to accumulate.
c. Develop a family escape plan and practice it with your entire fam-
ily, especially small children.
·
Draw a floor plan of your home and find two ways to exit from each
room. There should be one way to get out of each bedroom without
opening the door.
·
Teach children what the smoke alarm signal means, and that they
must be prepared to leave the residence by themselves if necessary.
Show them how to check to see if doors are hot before opening them,
how to stay close to the floor and crawl if necessary, and how to use
the alternate exit if the door is hot and should not be opened.
·
Decide on a meeting place a safe distance from your house and make
sure that all your children understand that they should go and wait for
you if there is a fire.
·
Hold fire drills at least every 6 months to make sure that everyone,
even small children, know what to do to escape safely.
·
Know where to go to call the fire department from outside your resi-
dence.
·
Provide emergency equipment such as fire extinguishers and teach
your family to use this equipment properly.
WHAT TO DO IF THERE IS A FIRE
IN YOUR HOME
If you have prepared family escape plans and practiced them with your
family, you have increased their chances of escaping safely. Review the
following rules with your children when you have fire drills so everyone will
remember them in a real fire emergency:
a. Dont panic; stay calm. Your safe escape may depend on thinking
clearly and remembering what you have practiced.
b. Get out of the house following a planned escape route as quickly as
possible. Do not stop to collect anything or to get dressed.
c. Open doors carefully only after feeling to see if they are hot. Do not
open a door if it is hot; use an alternate escape route.
d. Stay close to the floor; smoke and hot gases rise.
e. Cover your nose and mouth with a cloth, wet if possible, and take short,
shallow breaths.
f. Keep doors and windows closed unless you open them to escape.
g. Meet at your prearranged meeting place after leaving the house.
h. Call the Fire Department as soon as possible from outside your house.
Give the address and your name.
i. Never re-enter a burning building.
Contact your local Fire Department for more information on making your
home safer from fires and about preparing your familys escape plans.
WHAT THIS SMOKE ALARM CAN DO
This alarm is designed to sense smoke entering its sensing chamber. It
does not sense gas, heat (except 517TH), or flames.
When properly located, installed, and maintained, this smoke alarm is
designed to provide early warning of developing fires at a reasonable cost.
This alarm monitors the air and, when it senses smoke, activates its built-
in alarm horn. It can provide precious time for you and your family to
escape from your residence before a fire spreads. Such an early warning,
however, is possible only if the alarm is located, installed, and maintained
as specified in this Users Manual.
NOTE: This smoke alarm is designed for use within single residential
living units only; that is, it should be used inside a single-family home or
one apartment of a multi-family building. In a multi-family building, the
alarm may not provide early warning for residents if it is placed outside of
the residential units, such as on outside porches, in corridors, lobbies, base-
ments, or in other apartments. In multi-family buildings, each residential
unit should have alarms to alert the residents of that unit. Alarms designed
to be interconnected should be interconnected within one family residence
only; otherwise, nuisance alarms will occur when an alarm in another living
unit is tested.
IMPORTANT NOTE: WHAT SMOKE ALARMS
CANNOT DO
Smoke alarms will not work without power.
Battery-operated
alarms will not work without batteries, with dead batteries, or if the batter-
ies are not installed properly. AC powered alarms will not work if their AC
power supply is cut off by an electrical fire, an open fuse or circuit
breaker, or for any other reason. If you are concerned about the reliability
of either the batteries or your AC power supply for any of the above
reasons, you should install both battery and AC powered alarms for
maximum safety.
Smoke alarms may not sense fire that starts where smoke
cannot reach the alarms
such as in chimneys, in walls, on roofs, or on
the other side of closed doors. If bedroom doors are usually closed at
night, alarms should be placed in each bedroom as well as in the common
hallway between them.
Smoke alarms also may not sense a fire on another level of a
residence or building.
For example, a second-floor alarm may not
sense a first-floor or basement fire. Therefore,
alarms should be
placed on every level of a residence or building.
The horn in your alarm meets or exceeds current audibility require-
ments of Underwriters Laboratories. However,
if the alarm is located
outside a bedroom, it may not wake up a sound sleeper,
espe-
cially if the bedroom door is closed or only partly open. If the alarm is
located on a different level of the residence than the bedroom, it is even
less likely to wake up people sleeping in the bedroom. In such cases, the
National Fire Protection Association recommends that the alarms be inter-
connected so that an alarm on any level of the residence will sound an
alarm loud enough to awaken sleepers in closed bedrooms. This can be
done by installing a fire-detection system, by connecting alarms together,
or by using radio frequency transmitters and receivers.
All types of smoke alarm sensors have limitations. No type of
smoke alarm can sense every kind of fire every time. In gen-
eral, alarms may not always warn you about fires caused by
carelessness and safety hazards like smoking in bed, violent
explosions, over-loaded electrical circuits, children playing with
matches, escaping gas, improper storage of flammable materi-
als, or arson.
NOTE: This alarm is not designed to replace special-purpose fire de-
tection and alarm systems necessary to protect persons and property in
non-residential buildings such as warehouses, or other large industrial or
commercial buildings. It alone is not a suitable substitute for complete
fire-detection systems designed to protect individuals in hotels and mo-
tels, dormitories, hospitals, or other health and supervisory care and
retirement homes. Please refer to NFPA 101,The Life Safety Code, and
NFPA 72 for smoke alarm requirements for fire protection in buildings not
defined as households.
Installing smoke alarms may make you eligible for lower insurance rates,
but
smoke alarms are not a substitute for insurance
. Home owners
and renters should continue to insure their lives and property.
PLACEMENT OF SMOKE ALARMS
THIS EQUIPMENT SHOULD BE INSTALLED IN ACCORDANCE WITH
THE NATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION ASSOCIATIONS STANDARD 72
(National Fire Protection Association, Batterymarch Park, Quincy, MA
02269).
For your information, the National Fire Protection Associations Stan-
dard 72, reads as follows:
Smoke detectors shall be installed outside of each separate sleeping area
in the immediate vicinity of the bedrooms and on each additional story of the
family living unit including basements and excluding crawl spaces and unfin-
ished attics. In new construction, a smoke detector shall be installed in each
sleeping room.
Where to
Locate the Required Smoke Detectors in Existing Construction
.
The major threat from fire in a family living unit is at night when everyone is
asleep. The principal threat to persons in sleeping areas comes from fires in
the remainder of the unit; therefore, a smoke alarm(s) is best located between
the bedroom areas and the rest of the unit. In units with only one bedroom
area on one floor, the smoke alarms should be located as shown in
Figure 1.
