Seems like reviews for smoke detectors vary widely, and I’m having trouble landing on which to get.
I’d prefer the ‘talking’ ones that say which room is causing the alarm. A common complaint I’ve found is nuisance alarms.
I know they’re pricey, but I only need 5 of them.
Check out the Nest smoke/CO detectors. I believe, off the top of my head, they’ll talk (loudly) to give you an idea as to what’s going on. Plus, they’ll send an alert to your phone and give you the option to silence it from your phone as well.
Furthermore, if you have a Nest T-stat on the same network, when the smoke or co-detector goes off, it’ll shut down your furnace. Both because it’s the most likely source of CO and in the case of smoke, it won’t spread the smoke all over the house.
Shutting down the furnace due to CO and the phone alerts are what sold me. If I come home to the CO detector going off, I have no idea if it just started 10 minutes ago 10 ten minutes after I left for work this morning. With this, not only will I get the alert on my phone, but since the furnace is the only source of CO in my house, I know it can’t spend 8 hours pumping CO into my living space.
TLDR; take a look at Nest.
One other thing. The Nest detectors are $120 each, but they often run sales. Right now, five of them would cost you $565 (a 3 pack and 2 singles). If that’s steep, you could get, say, 2 or 3 of them, and put cheap Home Depot type detectors in locations that aren’t as likely to see nuisance alarms. That is, put the other ones away from full bathrooms and your kitchen. Use these ones for back bedrooms or basements. You can upgrade them to the Nest alarms when you’re ready.
The Nest ones will also attempt to tell the difference between smoke from an actual fire vs smoke from burning something or steam from a shower.
Pedant alert! These units are smoke ALARMS, not smoke detectors. (Reference: NFPA-72 and UL-217.) Smoke detectors are system-type units used with a fire control unit and are listed under a different standard.
BTW, smoke ALARMS are required to be replaced every 10 years. (Reference: NFPA-72 and most State building codes in the US.)
I’ve been using these and I like them:
Man, I ran across those and I really do want them, and the thermostat. Little rich for my tastes at the moment as you hinted. Since they’re wireless, I don’t know that combining them with another set of wired alarms would meet the requirement for an interconnected system.
But, now that I think about it, that’s not to say that I couldn’t just throw ONE of them in the hallway or something and get the thermostat.
Your pendantry is noted and not unwelcome. I’ll try to correct myself in the future but that verbiage is very habitual! 
Just what I’m looking for in every respect but being hardwired.
The Nest Smoke Alarms come in both wired and battery operated. My house had hardwired alarms, so it was no big deal to install these in their place. I believe that they’ll communicate with the battery operated ones, but I’m not sure. I know people were asking about it a while back, but I never followed up on the discussion. The issue, as I recall, was that the wired ones communicate with each other, the battery ones communicate with each other, but I don’t recall if two systems in the same house could communicate with each other. I’m 100% comfortable doing electrical work, but it’d be a lot easier just to stick one of these on the ceiling in a room that’s never had one and be done without having to climb around in the attic.
Next, and this is a zonexscout thing, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if their method of communication is standard in that a wired nest alarm could communicate with a wired Kidde alarm, or any other brand. That only seems logical. When I buy new alarms, I don’t look at the brand, just the features and the cost, so hopefully different brands can talk to each other. It shouldn’t be that difficult. And something tells me that they can ‘hear’ each other. That is, if one alarm sounds, others (across brands, hopefully) can hear it and start alerting as well, but I could be wrong. Again, this is up zonexscout’s alley.
Also, from what I recall, you aren’t required to have the t-stat. It just happens to be able to work with them, unlike a hub based system. You can buy just the alarm. It’s programmed through your phone or computer. The only thing required would be that you have wifi in your house. However, some of the other Nest devices, I believe do use the t-stat as a hub…maybe.
Regarding those Kidde sealed alarms. I’ve been using those when people ask me to install an alarm for them. Mostly because if they ask me to install one, they’re going to ask me to check the batteries every year. It’s easier to put one up and be done for 10 years.
If you have questions about any Nest devices, send them a PM on facebook. They’re very responsive.
I recommend you purchase hardwired ones that you interconnect if you can and at least one 10 year sealed battery combination CO/smoke unit.
Why? Power surges from lightning strikes. All the hardwired ones are vulnerable to this cause of failure.
The 10 year battery CO/smoke unit should be centrally located. This is your primary system, because it’s covering both types of threats, is using the most reliable form of power, and is giving you most of the benefit. Then you could put a hardwired nest one in the kitchen and another one near each combustion systems (hot water heaters, main furnace vents). That way you get an audible alarm for each likely failure that is specific to the cause…
Many (most? all? some? the two that I looked at.) hardwired alarms have a battery backup.
I never heard of these before, but it makes me think this:
Smoke Alarm (with the voice of Douglas Rain): Sorry to interrupt your meal, Dave, but there is a 37 per cent chance that there is a fire in the Rec Room. I estimate full conflagration in seventeen minutes unless action is taken now.
Yes. I am talking about a power surge destroying the electronics making backup pointless.
Fortunately for me, during the process I’m installing a whole system surge protector!
From what I’ve seen, for the most part alarms are only compatible within their manufacturer.
And upon further research, nuisance alarms are mostly caused by ionization alarms. Photoelectric alarms are more accurate and discerning.
And ‘talking’ adds a few tens of dollars to an alarm, but my concern with nuisance alarms will be alleviated by using photoelecrtric alarms.
Now just to find a good deal on hardwired photoelectric alarms.
You’re kinda pushing it there. If you’re worried about a power surge ruining your smoke detector and than having a fire that requires an alarm to alert you of it’s presence, you can buy a whole house surge protector. They’re not that expensive. If you’re that paranoid, the $100 or so is a small price to pay (I have one).
Also, while I haven’t experienced a lightning strike, I know at least one person who has. It’s my understanding that it’s ungodly loud.
Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with having a normal hardwired system and supplementing with battery only alarms as well.
And while I’m hear. If you’re going to put a CO alarm near a furnace or water heater, it needs to kept some distance away (20 feet or so), and keep in mind if the heat exchange breaks, it’s going to pump CO into the rest of the house, not right next to the furnace, though the same can’t always be said for a water heater.
In any case, I think the benefits of a hardwired detector with a battery backup far outweigh the any risks you can come up with.
I’d be interested to know if there’s any cases at all in which a fire broke out and the smoke alarms didn’t sound because they were destroyed by a lightening strike.
But, again, I see no issue with having a battery only alarm as a backup, I just don’t think the case you made is is statistically significant to warrant going out of your way to do it.
Well, in the last year I had a single lightning strike hit and it blew out:
a. my cable modem, through my surge protector
b. My brand new wifi router, also through a surge protector
c. about 6 LED light bulbs.
Some other gear. So I do think this is a real mechanism and no I don’t think a whole house surge protector is perfect.
While the 10 year battery combination CO/smoke alarms are about $40 on Amazon.
They also have one other major benefit. The problem with many of the hardwired models is they have ordinary alkaline batteries as the backup. The trouble is, even though the battery isn’t even getting used, every year or so the damn thing will begin beeping to alert you to change the battery. And it’ll never stop beeping since it has infinite power and the ones I have seen will beep loudly and obnoxiously.
There do seem to be models like the First Alert BRK SC9120LBL that are both hardwired and have a 10 year battery.
I don’t know why the wired ones wouldn’t communicate with the battery-powered ones. The wired ones just use the wire for power, but still communicate wirelessly. (I recently installed three in my house, replacing some old smoke detectors that had an extra communications wire).
Nest products communicate with each other using the weave protocol. There is an open source version, but I don’t know that much uses it outside of Nest.