I discovered an important home safety practice of which I think most people are misinformed; I know I was. I was arriving at a friend's apartment and the fire department was there responding to her 911 call. Her carbon monoxide detector had started screaming. She didn't believe there was really a problem but she figured 'better safe than sorry'. It was a good thing she called—and informative too! Carbon monoxide had built up in her oven and started accumulating in her kitchen because she had lined the bottom of her oven with aluminum foil. Apparently this should never happen as it blocks the vents in the oven making it impossible to vent the gases. Who knew?

I also discovered recently that five beeps from your CO monitor is an end-of-life signal. If you hear the five beeps in a row, you don't need to change out batteries, you need a new unit.