Smoke Alarm

[Nightcleaner]

There she is in the Photo Below. She been stuck on our hall ceiling for 25 years. I never really gave it any thought. It was handed to me by our local fire Service when they were doing Door to Door. The guy came in used our stepladder and put it where it is.

It only just Dawned on us that we never changed the battery in all that time. The little red light still going on and of. Is this some kind of Record for a Battery?

I mention this to my Friend. will copy and paste what he said when I emailed him


{ That's a very impressive battery you have in it, but I'd suggest
replacing the alarm ASAP. AFAIK, smoke alarms only have a guaranteed
working life of around 5 years or so. I don't know if they are all the
same, but the smoke detectors in them used to rely on a very small
radioactive source which gradually became less effective over time. New
smoke alarms are very cheap, and your life may depend on it working.}


Is he right ?


Second email only a moment ago

Your smoke alarm says "battery not replaceable" on it, so I assume it has some kind of extended life power pack in it (possibly Lithium battery pack), and not a normal 9V battery.

Some of the FireAngel range are officially 10 year life rather than 5 year life, and some of their range use optical sensors instead of radioactive ionic sensors, so I don't know what the maximum life of your is, but 25 years sounds a little excessive to me.

 

[RickeyM]

I look at it this way. A new smoke detector is cheap insurance. Some of the newer models come sealed with a battery that's supposedly good for 10 years. Also, check your local fire service. They may still have that program to give out detectors. In my city they'll give you one for the asking and put it up. This past Spring they came 'round offering smoke detectors. I thanked them but declined. I've got three up already.

 

[DaveVoorhis]

Is he right ?

There's often an expiry date printed on the unit, but a ten year maximum service life is typical.

 

[ZebraBlvd]

Could not agree anymore with what RickeyM said about fully functional alarms being "Cheap Insurance". Never been in a house fire, and I will do all I can yo keep it that way. I personally change out the batteries in my alarms every year, and replace the whole units with updated ones every 5 years. Everyone has a peace of mind level on this subject, this is just mine.

The news is full of daily/weekly/monthly stories about house fires either having no alarms, or non-functioning ones. When the News crew shows up at my home I want it to be for the reason that I won the PCH contest, not a fire.

 

[EngineerNate]

My electrician won't leave a house he works on without making sure it has smoke alarms. Good guy.

I'm putting smart smoke detectors that call the Fire Department one per floor in my house (away from the kitchen. ) and then regular smoke/CO detectors in rooms where it may be more necessary (Utility closet and kitchen, for CO, bedrooms for smoke).

 

[DCH]

To quote the great Mitch Hedberg: "I got a smoke alarm at home, but really it's a 9-volt-battery-slowly-drainer."

Not sure what your local regulations are, but when we had our master suite renovated (by a firefighter who is also a master builder) we were required to have hard-wired smoke detectors put in every bedroom in the house plus the main hallways.

 

[Nightcleaner]

Thanks: bought a new one while I was out shopping £10. Thought you might give me some stick if i left it.

 

[Hajidub]

God I hate the dreaded battery chirp at 130 in the morning!

 

[Nightcleaner]

was just thinking something a friend said about that

 

[Grenadeslio]

My electrician won't leave a house he works on without making sure it has smoke alarms. Good guy.

I'm putting smart smoke detectors that call the Fire Department one per floor in my house (away from the kitchen. ) and then regular smoke/CO detectors in rooms where it may be more necessary (Utility closet and kitchen, for CO, bedrooms for smoke).

It's now code to have smoke/co detectors in the general living areas and standard smoke detectors in the bedrooms. The required location in each rm changes so often I cant keep up lol.

 

[Grenadeslio]

To quote the great Mitch Hedberg: "I got a smoke alarm at home, but really it's a 9-volt-battery-slowly-drainer."

Not sure what your local regulations are, but when we had our master suite renovated (by a firefighter who is also a master builder) we were required to have hard-wired smoke detectors put in every bedroom in the house plus the main hallways.

Actually they are required to be both, the battery as a backup, with all interconnected so all will go off together.

 

[dosmalo]

Years ago when we were kids and smoke detectors had just become mainstream we gave one to our grandma as a holiday gift and installed it in her kitchen.
Later she told us: "I use it every day!"

 

[Grenadeslio]

Years ago when we were kids and smoke detectors had just become mainstream we gave one to our grandma as a holiday gift and installed it in her kitchen.
Later she told us: "I use it every day!"

They're not supposed to be installed within 10' of the kitchen last I looked. We do a lot of low voltage installations and the kitchens get heat detectors.

 

[ironcoder]

They're not supposed to be installed within 10' of the kitchen last I looked. We do a lot of low voltage installations and the kitchens get heat detectors.

Hello Grenadeslio,
I have wired smoke detectors everywhere in my home and garages (model i3 4 W-B). They run on 12 volts. I am sure you have installed some yourself. I like the design of the type I installed. You can just twist them off for replacement if they go bad. I also like not having to replace batteries. I have them attached to my own home brew system that sets off sirens in our home. If we are upstairs sleeping and a batteru alarm goes off downstairs, that is no help at all. Battery powered alarms just wail where they are. And they don't wail very loud either. We have an outdoor siren aimed at our heads in bed. It is a fast wake up call. Then I wrote some code to tell me which alarm went off. I have speakers all through the house attached to my voice synthesizer. Sleeping upstairs is a small risk from fire, but I just wanted to mitigate that risk. We do have a smoke alarm right in the kitchen. There is a panel mounted inside a cabinet and my wife knows which button to push to reset the alarms. Plus if I am working downstairs in the basement at my work bench, I know there is a meal coming soon, The same alarm system controls motion detectors and video cameras etc.....

 

[Grenadeslio]

Hello Grenadeslio,
I have wired smoke detectors everywhere in my home and garages (model i3 4 W-B). They run on 12 volts. I am sure you have installed some yourself. I like the design of the type I installed. You can just twist them off for replacement if they go bad. I also like not having to replace batteries. I have them attached to my own home brew system that sets off sirens in our home. If we are upstairs sleeping and a batteru alarm goes off downstairs, that is no help at all. Battery powered alarms just wail where they are. And they don't wail very loud either. We have an outdoor siren aimed at our heads in bed. It is a fast wake up call. Then I wrote some code to tell me which alarm went off. I have speakers all through the house attached to my voice synthesizer. Sleeping upstairs is a small risk from fire, but I just wanted to mitigate that risk. We do have a smoke alarm right in the kitchen. There is a panel mounted inside a cabinet and my wife knows which button to push to reset the alarms. Plus if I am working downstairs in the basement at my work bench, I know there is a meal coming soon, The same alarm system controls motion detectors and video cameras etc.....

Might want to think about adding a 12v battery back up, if the power is off due to the fire the smoke detectors won't be worth a hill of beans.

 

[old_tv_nut]

This place, built in 2005 and bought by me in 2015, has smoke alarms that are wired together and have 9v batteries for backup. There are also CO detectors that are not connected to the other alarms, probably added by a previous owner. Smoke alarm in every bedroom plus common areas, plus CO in common areas. The smoke alarms were starting to eat batteries in less than 9 months, so last year I replaced them all and the CO detectors. Nice thing about the new ones is that the battery compartments are accessible without removing the detector from the wall. Ones I have had before had to be taken off the mount and disconnected from the wiring, which went through a plug attached to the battery cover. Never could figure out why, unless it was a supposed to discourage battery theft by idiots in rental properties.

 

[ironcoder]

Might want to think about adding a 12v battery back up, if the power is off due to the fire the smoke detectors won't be worth a hill of beans.

My system runs on three 12 volt deep cycle marine batteries with 3 separate auto chargers on each battery. The different equipment divides the load from these three power sources. The computer itself runs on a 12 volts supply as do the touch panels. The OS for the computer is DOS in ROM. It has never crashed in 15 years now. The applications I wrote for this using C++ with a very nice compiler. The system runs about 12 hours off the three batteries. The computer and cameras are the heaviest loads.