I have four hard-wired in my 2-bedroom apt. One is right by the kitchen, and steam sets it off. I unwired it. I assume that I will be right there if I’m cooking and something catches on fire, and I have a fire extinguisher, NOT provided by the landlord. The other three ought to be enough to alert us if there’s a fire. We also have a CO detector we bought on our own. Regulations around here are stupid.
you have an ionization detector. Replace it with a photoelectric detector. It will protect you much better and your false alarm problem will disappear
Please watch this six minute video: The Aquarium Smoke Detector Test
If you have ionization detectors as your protection (typified by false alarms while cooking with no visible smoke) get them out of your house. The type of smoke generated by a couch cushion or wastebasket fire WILL NOT TRIP YOUR IONIZATION DETECTORS!
Going back to the OP, I think the regulation that all the many required smoke alarms in a home be wired together causes more harm than good. I can’t imagine not hearing a smoke alarm going off anywhere in the house. Those fuckers are LOUD. And when you have a dozen of them going off within 50’ of you, you can’t tell which one is malfunctioning, so eventually you just say fuck it and kill them all.
I’m personally not especially concerned about my house catching fire. It’s a new house with good wiring, and we don’t do stupid things like leaving candles untended. We don’t smoke, we don’t have kids. We clean our dryer vent. When I cook, I’m paying attention. The only common cause of house fires that seems to apply to our household is lightning strikes, but there is no way I don’t notice it if lightning strikes the house while I’m in it. I’m also very sensitive to the smell of smoke, and I would definitely notice if there was a fire in the house very quickly. It’s not worth the horrible racket of all the false alarms for such a tiny chance of a benefit, for our family.
At least some smoke detectors use a radioactive element, Americium, as a key part of the mechanism. Radioactive decay may put a physical limit of the life expectancy on the unit.
Well, I checked the half life of the Americium isotope used. It is 432.2 years. Even though only a few micrograms are used in each smoke detector, I doubt that is the reason they only last 5 years.
Back to the drawing board.
My apartment came with smoke detectors outside the bedroom doors.
Management recently insisted on installing detectors IN the bedrooms.
No, this was not replacing the existing ones, these are additional. For the bedroom we actually use as such, the two detectors are less than 5’ apart. For the one we use as a storage room, it’s about 6’ distance.
When they say that it has a 5 year life, that means that the device has been tested to five years. It will probably last much longer.
Well, at least two of ours failed so we decided to replace them all. (Failed = get the “needs battery” alarm regardless of the state of the battery: new, old, good, bad or removed). I would be very glad if the new ones last longer than 5 years.
The detectors with the americium isotope are the ionization detectors that will not detect smoky fires
I replaced the two ionisation detectors in my house that would falsely trigger from cooking fumes and even ants in the unit, with photoelectric ones. No false alarms since. I haven’t gone the whole hog with using a smoke source to test them but they do alarm when the test button is pressed. There are also versions with a light detector so you can test ones placed in high-ceilinged areas such as stairwells or in cathedral ceilings where you can’t easily poke the test button with a broom handle.
One of my detectors is not hard-wired, and the one in the hall, I just discovered, after deciding, due to this thread to take a closer look at it, is supposed to be hard-wired improperly. Only the hotwire was connected. The negative wire, and the grounding wire were connected to each other, and the same with the two wires coming from the ceiling. I wasn’t sure which wire coming from the ceiling was the ground wire, so I called the landlord. I claimed it fell down when I turned it off after a false alarm.
Of course, you could have an open floor plan, where there is no physical separation between the kitchen and living space.
RE: Ionization vs. Photoelectric.
Both technologies have their inherent strengths and weaknesses and it’s precisely this reason the NFPA recommends using smoke detectors that utilize both technologies.
RE: The NEST detector…seems ok, better than I expected honestly but, and this is a big but, this whole “blue LED” detection technology is a bit concerning…I mean, the testing they have conducted seems to show it works but with a life safety device, I might tend to go with the proven photo/ion combination.
RE: Detector lifespan…This is due to a NFPA guideline that states that in addition to manufacturers guidelines a “smoke alarm” shall not remain in service for more than 10 years. Really this boils down to the fact that certain types of smoke detection methods utilize parts with a limited lifespan and frankly, most people can’t be bothered to tell the difference so, well, sort of a King Solomon solution if you will. I guess the best thing that can be said for the policy is that it is fail safe. It doesn’t matter what part of the life safety device fails to work if it’s the part that kills you. This is important in regards to CO detection as well.
Not to stray off topic but in a typical new commercial fire alarm, the smoke detectors (note that I did not call them “smoke alarms”) are actually monitored by the fire alarm panel and things like chamber values and other things that would degrade or “drift” over time can actually be adjusted automatically by the panel and if they do fall out of range, the fire alarm panel provides notification of that.
RE: Eliminating false alarms. Really it’s not too difficult. Proper detector type, proper placement. Done.
If you have a problem after that well, it’s probably not a “false” alarm in that it went off for no reason whatsoever, if it did, replace it. If something caused it to go off, what was it? Did you burn the toast? If yes, don’t burn the toast. Was it steam? Don’t expose the detector steam, it’s not good for it. Also, how would you get steam into the detector? a really long hot shower with the detector right outside the bathroom maybe? Well, that, once again, is down to placement. I suppose you could go with a strictly photoelectric detector in that location which is less prone to be activated by steam but really, you should be using properly placed photo/ion smokes as well as CO detection (if you have CO sources in your home or attached garage) and eliminating the causes of the false alarms not the detection.
Technology will also allow more complex algorithms on smaller PCB’s so that, and the NEST device is a good example of this, false alarms will be noticeably reduced as that tiny little detector will have some fairly significant processing power and the ability to process real time. This same technology will be applied to video cameras (already is but very expensive) which strikes me as the best possible detection method. A camera with the right I/R’s, lenses and software (and engineering that is way beyond me) could conceivably detect a fire in it’s incipient stages almost anywhere within the range of the camera.
:smack:
that almost seems like a goofus and gallant bit…gallant cleans his smoke alarms and replaces batteries annually…goofus says he can smell smoke just fine, why do I need a smoke alarm?
I’ve never heard of goofus and gallant, but this in no way addresses the cost/benefit analysis I laid out. I think risk of a fire starting in my house is miniscule, and my not noticing a fire that has broken out is even smaller, so I’m not seeing much benefit for the cost of frequent and extremely annoying false alarms.
You really think you can smell smoke in a remote part of your house*, while you’re sleeping, before a well placed smoke detector can wake you up?
I could have smoldering wires in my basement and the alarm would go off down there, I’d guess, at least 5+ minutes, longer if the door were closed, before I’d notice it upstairs.
For a real world example, I once came home to the stench of burning rubber. My dryer belt was slipping, the entire house smelled awful and the basement getting hazy, but my (now ex) wife hadn’t noticed it yet.
Next time you hear a report of a fire on the news, listen to the end of the news cast when they say ‘there were no working smoke detectors in the house when the fire broke out’.
*‘remote’ doesn’t even mean you have to have a big house, it could just be behind a closed door, in the basement, attached garage etc. I know you can’t have a smoke detector in every single area of the house, but have zero is almost asking for problems.
And what if it goes off when you make toast without burning it? And what if your bedroom (where you need a smoke alarm) is right next to your bathroom (where the shower is)?
There is zero chance I wouldn’t have noticed the dryer belt thing immediately. Ymmv, I guess. We actually do have an alarm in the basement which so far has not driven me crazy. Our house is compact and open floor plan, and I am convinced that I will know if it is on fire. The only places where an alarm would not be exposed to steam or cooking are bedrooms, and if my bedroom is on fire (highly unlikely) I’m not sleeping through it.
Welp, you win.
In other news, I got my two Nest detectors today. From unboxing to having them installed (wired) and being 100% done, probably took 30 minutes. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.