Manitoba residents fall back one hour Sunday morning and the Winkler Fire Department Chief says it's a good time to check and replace batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

Richard Paetzold says the spring and fall time changes are perfect to coincide with detector and battery checks. "We want to make sure that we check our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors as they're our frontline defense in case of fire in our house. Even if you have wired in smoke detectors, a lot of them have battery backups in case the power goes out so they continue to work, so if you have that style, make sure those batteries are in working order as well."

Paetzold says the only time you don't need to change your batteries is if you have a detector with lithium ion batteries. In that case, owners only need to test their batteries as they're meant to be in the detector for the life of the detector. "For those ones, as well as any other detector after 10 years, you get rid of them and put in new ones as their effectiveness to detect smoke is greatly reduced."

When it comes to carbon monoxide detectors, Paetzold says they have a shorter life span, needing replaced every seven years.