A few days ago, my wife and I had a pretty scary experience that I think others can learn from. She was home with the kids - 3 y.o. boy and 1 y.o. girl - while I was at work. She put the boy in his room for nap / rest time like normal. During this time he often doesn't sleep but will play quietly or read. We have baseboard electric heaters in our house, and at some point he accidentally knocked a small plastic toy into the heater. While he took a nap, the heater began melting the plastic, making some smoke and causing the room to reek from melting plastic. Thankfully, my wife checks on him regularly during his rest times, so she noticed this before the fumes got too bad or anything actually caught on fire beyond smoldering, and was able to move him and take the toy out of the heater.Here's the frightening part though: in the maybe 10-15 minutes this went on, the smoke detector in his room, which is tested regularly, has a god battery, and was on the ceiling no more than 5 feet from the heater, did NOTHING. We did some research into it and found that it was an ionization smoke detector. It turns out that of the two main kinds, ionization and photoelectric, ionization are WAY more common in houses because they're cheaper. HOWEVER, these smoke detectors have a pretty horrifying failure rate, and apparently many even have a clause in the booklet that comes with them that they are not reliable. Essentially, they're ok for big, active fires and are pretty sensitive of heat (they're the cause of most "nuisance" alarms from things like opening and oven or shower steam) but REALLY bad at detecting smoke from smoldering fires, like what happened with us and what regularly happens in house fires. The problem is so bad that many esteemed fire safety professionals and organizations have made statements urging against their use, and several states have actually banned them in rental properties!To give you an idea how much better photoelectric alarms are, after this happened we went out that night and got photoelectric detectors for the kids' rooms. We turned the baseboard off that night and used a space heater in his room. The next day we turned the baseboard back on. It turns out in cleaning out the melted plastic we missed a tiny bit, and it melted again. It was very small, only maybe 1/4" big. Within 5 minutes of the baseboard turning on and remelting that tiny piece, the new alarm went off! It was really a big relief to know they were so much safer.Here's the caveat: there are *some* scenarios where ionization will react quicker and therefore be safer. A lot of the organizations who suggest against them say they're ok to have IF you also have a photoelectric detector. The new ones we bought are a combination alarm with both. The main drawback to photoelectric / combo alarms is price, but they're really not that expensive (ours were $20), especially when you consider the stakes. I really wanted to let people know to check your alarms and make any adjustments, perhaps buying combination alarms or adding photoelectric alongside your ionization detectors, that they can to help protect your families. Be safe!TLDR: Many homes have ionization smoke detectors which, I learned this week, are extremely unsafe by themselves. To best protect for family and home, use photoelectric detectors alongside ionization, or get combination detectors! via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2GJpakq
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