How to Test Your Smoke Detector

Video Transcript

"I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to show you how to test your smoke detectors. Now the first thing with a smoke detectors located up there, you want to position your step ladder. It's very important to make sure you have both sides down and locked and these older types of step ladders have this shelf. We want to make sure that's down because that helps secure the step ladder. You want to make sure it's position properly and that it is stable. Once you do that and go ahead and climb up here. Now every smoke detector has a button here that you push to hold. Now on your modern homes, all these smoke detectors are inter connected throughout the home. So the one thing we want to listen for when we are pushing this test is that you also here the other smoke detectors in the house going off. This is a nice safety feature of newer homes. And also can be wired into older homes. Because that way if you do have a fire that's starts up in one part of the house, and you may be asleep in the bedroom then the smoke detector which are located in all bedrooms now by code, will wake you up. So once you are ready to go you want to press, and we are going to hold this for about a second or two until you here the smoke detector going off. Ok and you'll hear a series of short beeps and again if you listen in the background you should hear the rest of the smoke detectors in the house going off. Now if you test it and either it doesn't come on, and this one doesn't tone, then you want to replace the smoke detector. Most of these can be matched up and you can get these in hardware stores or you home improvement stores. It is, if it is a custom specialized system you may want to go back to your specialized contractor. And also if you press the test and you do not hear some of the other smoke detectors going off you may try changing the batteries or and if that still does not work then you may have a fault in your wiring. In that case you want to consult a professional to trouble shoot those wires. Now it's very important that when you press the test particularly in a smoke detectors system that's tied in a series that all the smoke detectors go off. So this is Tim Gipson and that's how to test your smoke detector."