Spring Ahead: One Reason NOT to Replace Your Smoke Alarm Battery
If you live in the Hudson Valley you should probably consider a different option than replacing your smoke alarm batteries when you "spring forward."
This Sunday marks the beginning of daylight saving time. On March 11 at 2am most of the clocks in your house will automatically leap forward by an hour. If you still have older, analog clocks you'll have to remember to wind them ahead before you go to sleep on Saturday night.
Safety experts have also been encouraging people to use the semiannual time change to remember to swap out their smoke alarm batteries. It's something that's been drilled into our heads for decades, but will now become a thing of the past for residents of the Hudson Valley.
New York State has enacted a law that will make it mandatory for all new smoke alarms sold in our area to be either hard-wired or contain a battery that lasts for at least 10 years. The law was supposed to go into effect on April 1 of this year, but the deadline has been extended to 2019.
Even though it's not the law yet, those new smoke and CO2 alarms with long lasting batteries are already available in local stores. So, instead of changing your battery this weekend you may want to consider just changing out your entire smoke alarm.That way, you won't have to worry about it again until 2028.