Essential safety checks: Stay safe at home and on holiday

*Collaborative post.  Did you know that your smoke alarm needs replacing every 10 years?  Regardless of whether it’s battery or mains powered?  I was blindly naive to this until the FireAngel team running the Check the Date campaign contacted me.  They explained that sensors in smoke alarms start to degrade after they’re first activated and all smoke alarms have a ten-year life expectancy.

This may sound a bit like a sales ploy, especially when your alarm may still function after this time, but experts have tested and proven that alarms are no longer sensitive enough to detect smoke within the time limits laid down in the British Standards.  Basically after ten years smoke alarms may start to behave erratically and not provide your family reliable protection.

holiday safety checks

How checking a smoke alarm whilst on holiday potentially saved our lives

You might be wondering why I’ve decided to share this info with you?   Bear with me for a minute I’m getting to my point!   My husband has always been very carefully with our smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms at home.  He tests them weekly when a reminder goes off on his phone.  Neither of us though have ever thought to check smoke or carbon monoxide alarms whilst on holiday.  As I think is perfectly natural, we’ve always let our guard down by trusting our holiday accommodation provider, making the assumption they would look out for the safety of their guests.  After our experience last summer we now always take the time to make some basic holiday safety checks and I’m sharing our story to encourage you to too…

In June we stayed in a mobile home for the weekend.  We hadn’t just booked a caravan from a random online site,  it was a mobile home on a tourist board certified four-star glamping site.

The journey was pretty horrific with heavy rain pelting down on our windscreens and grumpy kids in the back of the car winding each other up.  We were looking forward to arriving at the caravan and watching some tv, snuggled up in front of our mobile home log burner.

holiday safety checks

Fortunately my husband realised whilst prepping the fire, that they was no carbon monoxide detector in the caravan.  Unbelievably when he opened up the smoke alarm attached to the ceiling of the living room it didn’t have any batteries.  This prompted him to take a look in the gas boiler cupboard.  We were pretty annoyed to find an out of date gas safety certificate stuck to the front of the gas boiler.  It hadn’t been serviced for two years.  (Gas appliances legally have to be serviced every 12 months).

Most worryingly of all was the distinct lack of care when we mentioned all of these safety hazards to the owners of the glamping site. They didn’t seem fazed or concerned at all.  They told us just to light the fire and open the windows so that the carbon monoxide could escape!

We wouldn’t risk our life’s and our boys life’s being cut short by carbon monoxide poisoning or smoke inhalation so we refrained from using the fire and avoided using the gas boiler for hot water too.  We were understandably annoyed that the owners lack of safety awareness spoilt our holiday but learnt a valuable life lesson, that you cannot overlook basic safety checks… even when on holiday.

Disclaimer – This post has been written in collaboration with FireAngel to raise awareness of their Check the Date campaign.  For more information about FireAngel smoke and carbon monoxide alarms check out – www.fireangel.co.uk/

 

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7 Comments

  1. 30th January 2018 / 8:19 pm

    That’s some bad business to not make sure there are batteries in the smoke alarms and check to make sure they are working before renting out to customers. I’m glad your husband thought to check it. That isn’t something I would have thought of and it shouldn’t be something any customer to have to think of but it’s good that you did:)

  2. 30th January 2018 / 11:47 am

    I love it how sometimes regular people have more common sense in these situations. Safety’s paramount, full stop :)

  3. 29th January 2018 / 9:29 pm

    Well done to your husband – I can’t believe the owners’ lack of duty of care!

    • Lisa
      Author
      30th January 2018 / 10:13 pm

      I know shocking isn’t it!

  4. 29th January 2018 / 8:18 pm

    oh my goodness. that is so shocking. The amount of times I’ve cursed the strong light of a smoke alarm when really it’s a good job it’s there as it’s showing it’s running. That’s really bad. Especially that they didn’t even care. Thank you for pointing out that we should always check wherever we are.

  5. 29th January 2018 / 12:17 pm

    Oh wow! It’s shocking- the lack of concern some people have when it comes to safety and especially of the people they’re catering for!

  6. 29th January 2018 / 12:10 pm

    Oh wow! Your story of your holiday is shocking! It’s surprising how some people don’t have much of an understanding of the dangers of a lack of simple things such as a carbon monoxide alarm!

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