How to Choose a Carbon Monoxide Alarm for Home Safety

Video Transcript

"There are multiple different carbon monoxide. We actually, here, have a carbon monoxide smoke alarm combination, so you can find those out on the market. But a carbon monoxide alarm is going to be helpful for anyone who has any type of flame in their house or open flame. So it can be anything like a gas heat, gas electric, whether you have gas lights in your house, you have gas water heater, gas stove. You can find all those types of things. We also recommend a carbon monoxide detector for anyone who has an attached garage to their house because lots of people don't realize the amount of carbon monoxide that comes out of your vehicle. So it's very important that you have one of these up. Carbon monoxide is called the silent killer, and the reason for that is is because it affects you before you ever realize that there's a problem in your home. A lot of the times, it's going to start with headaches, nausea, vomiting, that sort of thing, and you just think you don't feel good, you're sick, and then it starts to affect everyone in the home. And you don't really realize what's going on until, a lot of the times, it's too late and somebody's already lost their lives. So we do recommend that you have a carbon monoxide alarm in your home, and you can find carbon monoxide alarms out there everywhere. I mean, they sell them...they can be ones that you plug into the wall. They can be battery-operated ones. As long as you have one, you're helping protect yourself. The ones that you plug into a wall, you are going to want to see if they have a battery backup. And the reason for this is lots of the times, when all these gas appliances are used are when your power goes out because they're the only things that are going to work. And so if you only have a carbon monoxide detector that's plugged into your wall and your power goes out, it's not going to be effective. So we want to make sure that you have one that has a battery -- either has a battery backup, or you have a battery-operated one in your home -- and that you're reading the manufacturer instructions like the manufacturers recommend that you change the batteries just like smoke alarms -- twice a year -- and that you keep maintaining those. And so that's a very important component of making sure that they work when you need them."