Last Updated on 22 February 2019.

Life or death for 2%

Batteries for Small change?

I paid £25 for a new battery in my iPhone 6 plus this week, and its now useful again, some people see the little mobile devices as life or death, and I have to be honest I love the little critter! It made me think that for 3% of what the phone cost new, I have a new phone (well, new-ish) The phone had deteriorated slowly, so it wasn’t apparent what the difference was until now – even the internet seems quicker! So it’s understandable why changing the batteries in your mobile phone is a great idea. But, why change fire alarm batteries?

Well, the phone battery still had life in it, according to the young, clever and energised people at the lakeside Apple store (where do they get those people from?), it was OK for another 6-8 months, but having read the reports about Apple slowing the phones to match the battery ‘Umph’ available, I thought for £25 it was worth the money to find out.

So, it occurred to me that maintenance on radio fire alarms, where we are changing batteries in radio detectors, the cost of the batteries are only 2% of the cost of the detectors. But, this is where the similarity ends.

Why Change Fire Alarm Batteries?

The smoke detector is a life safety system, albeit not quite as sexy as an iPhone, but sexiness goes out of the window when you’re in a fire. If you don’t change the battery in the phone, then nothing really bad happens, even if you think your world has ended when in reality all that has happened is that you are transported back to 1989 and to a time where people looked up when they walked…

If you don’t change the batteries in your alarms then its quite literally life or death.

We come across systems where people haven’t acted on changing the batteries and ruined £250 smoke detectors when the alkaline battery leaks over the electronics.

This means that in that room a fire will not be detected, they often shrug shoulders as if its not life or death, probably because they haven’t been in a fire, if they had then things would be different…

…For 2%

I hope we’reon the same page on the importance of and answer to the question; Why change fire alarm batteries?

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.

All the best,

Paul Field
Chief Battery Changer
WFP Fire & Security
01277 622 932

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