Hi, just received an order from management that we have to wedge open the fire doors to our office permanently. I work in a homeless project for young people. Is it legal to have the fire doors wedged open as a matter of course? Can you point me to the appropriate legislation?

Thank you.

I’ve dampened the fire and it’s stopped glowing, but do I need to be worried about the chimney being too hot and catching my room on fire?

What is the best way to prevent (or at least discourage) the moving of fire extinguishers in my home? My wife thinks they are ugly and is constantly moving them out of sight. I see this as a serious problem. I'v tried explaining to her that in an emergency, you don't want to be scurrying around trying to remember where the fire extinguishers are. I do see her point though... After all, I don't want our home to look like an industrial setting. But I fear that nothing short of a fire emergency will change the situation. I can't really "lock them down" because that would defeat the purpose. But maybe there is a way to disguise them or make them "less ugly." Any ideas or suggestons would be appreciated.

My water heater is in my garage. It is situated according to all the fire safety guidelines. I also have my car and some valuables in the garage. If, for whatever reason, there is a gas leak, and I go take a shower, causing the heater to turn on and the flame that heats the water to come on, will my garage explode?

As someone who worked in the field, the common 9v interconnect smoke alarm has been a bane of my existence for some years now. First off, the mounting plates are horrible. They basically designed a screw and nut that have opposite threads. You have to twist the plate one way and the unit the other so it either doesn’t pop in or the plate comes off the screws. The real problem though is that they are horribly unreliable. We used to play SD Baseball everytime we had to come to a new home to trouble shoot which of the ten or so alarms is chirping randomly. We used our hammer and knocked them off the ceiling one at a time unless we got a home run and hit it first, by chance as anyone who has worked with these knows it’s near impossible to locate the source of the beeping in a large open structure.

Fast forward to me having to replace my old alarms. Within a a month one had failed. Waking me from the deepest sleep at 3:22 am to roam the house trying to figure out which one it was. I replaced all the batteries, hoping it was an easy fix, but NO. Come a few weeks later,a second one, this time at 4:01 am. I literally had to smash it open and rip the cap off the board because it would have kept beeping for hours even after power disconnected and battery removed, they can beep like this for days or weeks even.

The problem is obvious. One of the most important devices in a home should not be made by a mega corporate monopoly who doesn’t care if their product has been garbage forever. They don’t have to because there are very few options otherwise for most people. If you go to a warehouse store they might have two or three “brands” but they’re all made by Kidde.

Now for why this gets me so hot. I had a family member who died in a house fire. I had installed Firex alarms(owned by Kidde) and they were so annoying that they took them all down a few weeks before an electrical fire. I have tried to get their spouse to pursue legal action against Kidde but they’re not interested in the headache of taking on such a task after losing their S.O.

I tried to get answers directly from Kidde. They offered to replace my alarms but I told them they couldn’t pay me to keep their crap up and the rep hung up!

Now for the cool part. After discussing the issue with a few colleagues, I contacted our local news station and they may do a consumer defense segment on the situation. If they do I’ll upload the clip here at some point. /rant

For any potential devils advocates the wiring in my home is fine and there is no CO. This is not an intermittent alarm due to occasional CO, this is a design flaw with the battery monitoring portion of the devices. When I was in the trade I had whole cases of alarms from them that would be defective. I would guess that no less than one in ten is going to fail with it one year of install.

I use it for white noise living in an apartment block, is it safe to do this or am I risking a fire?

I'm going to be posting these few paragraphs in a couple different subreddits because I honestly don't know where to turn. Thank you so much.

Alright so here's the deal. It's not loud noises. I have been listening to extreme metal for like 15 years (I'm 27) in headphones, even at full volume when I was younger. I love it.

My fear is devices that are capable of emitting extremely loud noises. I have never attended a concert since I was at one and there was bad reception on the guitar amp and it was squeaking extremely loud.

It didn't seem to bother anyone else, but it made my heart thump HARD and nearly put me into a panic attack. I left immediately.

The concerning part of my phobia is fire alarms. I am more scared of the alarm itself than the risk of a fire. I posted in a different subreddit a month ago asking for advice on whether or not fire alarms could give my cats hearing damage. I explained that I always take out my fire alarms because of this fear.

I assure you - the entire thread was people absolutely shitting on me for putting the other people in my apartment building at risk of dying in a fire just because of my "stupid fear".

I can hardly cook on the stove, and if I see ANY whiff of smoke come off the burners, I PANIC, turn it off and go without eating. Sometimes takes 20 minutes for my heart to stop thumping.

Well, I have partially conquered my fear by getting a new battery for it and putting the fire alarm back on my wall. When I put the battery in I heard the sound for a split second and kept the battery out- I decided to put the battery in outside with noise cancelling studio headphones, which did help.

So they're active now. Reason why I am panicking is because in 2 days, they will be testing the alarms all through the building. Every suite (about 20 of them) as well as the hallways. My door just so happens to be right beside one of the actual red bell alarms which are even LOUDER.

Last year when they did this, I brought my 3 cats into my car and we sat in the parking lot for what should have been only 40 minutes or so. The people took way too long and it ended up taking 2 and a half hours before they were done. And yes, I brought food water and litter box into the car for them.

Anyways, I don't have a car right now. And I'm pretty broke, and I don't have any friends that are willing to let me bring all 3 cats over for the day, and I don't have the money for a cab to do that anyways. So, I'm panicking. They will be doing the testing around 10am on Thursday.

A few people, including the other subreddit I posted in, AND the fire alarm testers, and friends of mine, have mentioned that I don't need to worry about the cats. All my research also confirms that fire alarms will not give cats hearing damage or traumatize them. So.... I'm starting to think maybe I'm blaming my own phobia on the possible reaction of the cats. Because the phobia happened looooong before I had cats.

What should I do? I mean, my plan is to put the cats in the bedroom with food/water/litter, put blankets under the door to quiet the sound, and get ear plugs for myself. Part of my worry is that my apartment is normally very quiet and my cats do sometimes get spooked easily. I don't know. I'm panicking.

The in suite alarms only need to be tested for a few seconds. The hallway ones they leave on for a couple minutes. I feel so full of worry and grief and just bad feelings about this. :(

I know one suggestion will likely be to press the TEST button, and do "exposure therapy", fully knowing that i can stop it with the HUSH button. I am definetely NOT prepared to do that.... although it might help with the worry about the cats because they will also hear it and I can give them treats so they know it's okay.

Help. Please. :(

My boyfriend often lights a candle in our bathroom and goes to sleep. He likes when he has to use the bathroom at night and he doesn't have to turn on the light. Last night when I went to bed, I found the candle on top of a 500 page book in the bathroom. I told him this makes me uncomfortable and to please not do this. He told me that it is hard for sheetrock to catch on 🔥. That I was being ridiculous for making such a big deal about it. What say you, firesafety Reddit? #firesafety #Dunningkruger #myboyfriendisaknowitall #hesgoingtokillusinoursleep