Each year, we are reminded with the popular slogan, “Change Your Clocks, Change Your Batteries” by the International Association of Fire Chiefs that we need to regularly change the batteries in the smoke detectors in our homes. And true to the slogan, I was a stickler for this in my house.

But, my camper’s smoke alarm just chirped and that’s when I realized that I’ve owned this camper for 4 years and have never changed the smoke detector battery .

So, a new RVing slogan should likely be:

Of course, the best solution is to upgrade your smoke detector over the cheap one that the manufacturer provides (you know, the one people use as a timer for cooking!). Industry groups recommend photoelectric sensors vs. the standard ionization sensor due to the types of fires that it will sense and the less false alarms. I actually had a friend who almost had a fire when a bunkbed cushion was pushed up against a light fixture- she and her husband could smell the hot burning smell, but the standard smoke detector never went off.

When we rented our house out, we were required to use smoke detectors that had 10 year (aka worry free) batteries in them. I’ll look for an equivalent product for the camper.