Smoke detectors for the elderly

I already bought him one of those for his phone, but he mostly doesn't see it. After reading through some of the sites that readers suggested, it seems he's not the only one who doesn't react to flashing lights. Some figures suggest as few as 1/4 of the people using them reliably react to light. Since posting my first question, I found an alarm that will suffice that's got a low-frequency horn that sounds a little like a truck backing up. Very audible.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green
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I gave him a flashing phone last Christmas and it's not very effective. That's why I didn't want to go that route for a smoke detector. He has plenty of hearing left, it's just all low frequency sounds. He's given up on his hearing aid, too, because he can't stand the constant background din. I've learned to make sure he can see my lips when I am talking because I know he's doing a fair amount of lip reading. I do have some old Bell dial phones around that I could give him because I believe he doesn't have a good, solid mechanical phone that works through (frequent) blackouts. That would kill two birds with one stone. Good idea, thanks!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Yes, thanks. It's this search that ironically led me to the detector I was seeking. A low pitched alarm that does both CO and smoke for under $40 and that runs on batteries.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

I have too, yet, oddly enough I am the one that always wakes up to the once a minute chirp of a low battery signal. I think a lot depends on what stage sleep you're in when the alarm sounds. I say that because I can remember my dreams actually relating to an alarm sound that woke me up, as if the sub-conscience is hearing the alarm while you're dreaming and then "edits" your dream to include a loud siren.

Yeah, all sorts of crap lands on the A-coil when it's wet and by the time you start running really hot air over it from the furnace on the first cold day it starts a stinkin'. I live across the street from a firehouse and the first really cold night will have maybe 10 alarms running for smoke smell calls.

Pretty funny. My mother had a similar, though less positive reaction to a song by the Doors called "The End" where Morrison sings: "Father, I want to kill you, Mother, I want to . . ." which on my recording, at least, was unintelligible, but was really:

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she asked me "Bobby, what is he saying?" "I dunno Ma, he's just howling." (-:

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

It just depends on your perspective I guess. What are the technical and manufacturing differences between the mass-produced $20 smoke detector and one of these "specialized" low-frequency units?

I don't want to deny anyone a living, but the problem seems to be that the mass-manufacturers are making the wrong product. It doesn't work for perhaps as many as 1 in 5 Americans.

As for costing out the differences, the worst price difference I can see is that it might take some AA batteries instead of 9V one to create as loud a sound at the lower frequency. I just don't see where it should cost over

10X the cost of a Wal-mart or Target special. At $159 each, it's not likely that a lot of elderly people will be able to properly cover their house with them.

I believe I read somewhere that 9V batteries are very high on the list of items shop-lifted by the elderly. That's no surprise to me when I read about the living conditions of some of the older people in America. I've been shocked at how much they're charging for 9V's ($4!!!!) lately so maybe the switch to AA based alarms, if that's what it takes to make a loud enough noise with them, is a blessing, too. AA's seem to be available at more reasonable prices than 9V cells in general.

Considering that those needing such alarms are most likely to be the same elderly adults asked to bail out Wall St.'s Richie Richkids with their million dollar bonuses, I think what you get for $159 v. $20 is a valid question. If 70 million people can't hear these units well enough to be awakened by them, there was a BIG basic mistake in the selection and approval of the frequencies used. That's what Mr. Morgan's URL attested to. Fire experts are beginning to look at the statistics and have realized the high frequencies originally chosen as attention-getters doesn't work as well at rousing people as lower tones, especially when natural old-age hearing attrition becomes a factor.

In fact, because some of the sites I looked at said that bed shakers are the best at awakening people, I am thinking about taking the very loud bass unit from a pair of Creative PC speakers I have lying around and hooking it into my home alarm system to "shake the bed" with something like a recording from a disaster movie. The literature I've been reading is that every second counts in escaping a fire and that a combination tone and a bedshaker alarm would give us the best possible warning and be very affordable as well since I already have an alarm panel in the house.

As for being "specialized" I think the whole point here is that low-frequency tone alarms shouldn't be considered something special. From what Mr. Morgan's referral said, they won't be a high dollar, specialized product with a few years as the new rules come into play.

There's very little design or cost difference between an alarm with a low frequency sounder than one with a high frequency. High frequency was the wrong choice, now that's getting fixed. I guess someone in the CPSC was standing next to someone elderly and noticed what I did. Finally. Everbody msistakes mkes. (-:

Oops, was that a rant? I guess so. Sorry. It just amazes me that this problem has existed for so long without anyone doing a damn thing about it. Who needs death panels when we have Underwriter's Laboratory approving smoke alarms that elderly and hard of hearing people can't hear? Maybe they need to change their name to "Undertaker's Labs."

Thanks for your input!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Nate, thanks for the info. His is an older house with battery smokes. I got him a very bright phone flasher last year so that the phone would wake him in emergencies, but he just doesn't wake up to flashing lights. I've come to find out that the success rate of flashing lights is about 25%. Since he's got high frequency hearing loss, the best option seems to be the low frequency alarm I just bought. Whether it wakes him from sleep, we've yet to discover but at least he can actually hear this unit in the test mode. The ones with the high pitched sonalerts are completely inaudible to him although they are so loud they hurt my ears.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

I believe that the frequencies used by current smokes are in the 3000Hz range. However, there seems to be quite a difference between battery and line-powered smokes and the tones they create.

The ones I have seen are a little larger than a quarter in diameter. And yes, judging from how much bigger my woofer is than my tweeter, I'd say larger usually means lower. (-:

Fortunately, a day's worth of on-line and in-store version got me what I needed. I probably would not feel comfortable handing him a used smoke. (-:

I thought of that, but I also didn't want to get into any wrongful death suit or run afoul of some obscure federal regulation that makes it illegal to modify an alarm. There's no telling whether the extra current draw might somehow affect the unit's detection capabilities.

Thanks. I figure it's quid pro quo, and maybe I'll live to be an old person that someone can be nice to. Once I found out that he was falling asleep in the living room lounger with a lit pipe and couldn't hear it when the alarm went off, I knew it was time to act. Sort of a case of "ask not for whom the [smoke detector] tolls . . ."

BTW, God's already rewarded me. During the search for smoke detectors I found a hardly used box set of the original Outer Limits from the 60's for dirt cheap. Not only was my mission accomplished, I got a bonus.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

You should have five fires and five CO emergencies, to evaluate this aspect of the detector. A hundred would be better, but I'll settle for

  1. I'm glad you found what you wanted and that you posted it.

LOL

Reply to
mm

I thought about used units, but then decided against it. Older units, even of the photoelectric design, change with age. Anything that depends on clear plastic staying crystal clear probably has serious longevity constraints, especially if exposed to smoke, grease and other contaminants.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Pretty amazing.

Reply to
mm

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Thanks. If I hadn't been able to find the FirstAlert unit, I might have looked into one of those.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Thanks. I looked into that, along with calling both my firehouse and his (they just closed it a month ago, so they were not of much help!) to see what programs were available. The DoD reimbursement had to be done their way, which meant maybe waiting 6 weeks or more for the unit because they have to approve it first. I didn't feel comfortable waiting, nor do I like to spend a lot more for stuff just because it's got a "medical" label on it. Thank god the FirstAlert unit does the trick and for even less than the reimbursed price of one of the speciality units. That means I can get more of them to spread around the house.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Same sort of situation just not family so I can't quite force myself or a work crew on him for a problem that he doesn't see as serious although those around him do.

One of the tragedies of fire insurance is that if you took all the premiums paid, the money would pay for a lot of sprinkler systems. It's so typical, though, to spend a lot to replace but not a lot to prevent. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trauma as a nation had we just locked jetliner cabins like El Al has been doing for 20 plus years.

If I were building a new home, I would definitely install fire control sprinklers in it.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

It's amusing, in a sad sort of way, that it's so hard to find some simple information. I downloaded the PDF but couldn't find any specs for the sound frequency.

It's a battery only device with a door that swings out so that battery replacement doesn't required dismounting the unit from the ceiling. Practice using the door before mounting it because it takes a unique sort of pulling motion and I had to dismount it to make sure I wasn't going to break it off. I thought it pulled out like a drawer but it swings out like an orange wedge on a single pivot.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

I have experience with line-powered smoke detectors and other devices that I actually designed and built having similar audible tone.

My experience suggests that line powered smoke detectors with a buzzy tone have most of their acoustic spectrum around/above 2500 Hz and probably nearly enough all of it above 2000 Hz.

My experience suggests that the frequency difference between the loud harmonic components makes a low fundamental frequency apparent despite lack of significant presence of the fundamental frequency and the first few, quite a few even, harmonics.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Reply to
Don Klipstein

If it does voice, I'm going to assume it handles at least the classic telephonic range of about 300hz to 3000hz, plus or minus a couple of db.

Good. Wall mount also OK, I assume. Thanks.

The Kidde model I bought in part because it has a front-mounted door for the battery. Guess what - you have to take it off and fiddle a "lock" on the back, before you can use the front door!

Who designs these things, anyway??!??

Josh

Reply to
zzznot

You have a point there.

My AC smoke alarm specifically says not to make changes to it, but I connected a relay coil across the buzzer, and I used the contacts as part of my burglar/fire alarm system, first to set off the alarm, steady instead of wailing, and soon it will notify a monitoring service.

If I have messed up the alarm and I die in a fire, I have in my will that my estate should sue me.

Reply to
mm

That one's really low. If he doesn't shape up, he'll never make captain.

Reply to
mm

High chance minimal upper portion of first formant range, as in above

400 or 600 Hz or so, and even then likely minus more than a couple dB at frequencies that low unless it uses an actual dynamic loudspeaker preferably at least 1.5 inches in diameter.

I have experience with an 800 Hz highpass 4th order Chebyshev filter leaving voices fully recognizeable, and only moderately to moderately-severely "tinny". Frequencies much below 700 Hz were essentially absent here, roughly 10 dB down at 700 Hz and probably at least 32 dB down at 400 Hz.

Most loudspeakers do not achieve flatness of frequency response to +/- 2 dB over their rated frequency ranges. One rated for +/- 3 dB has traditionally been considered a "high fidelity" one, even if achieving this only in a specific setup or the variable frequency signal being moderately narrowband filtered noise rather than sine wave, and I have seen very little improvement in loudspeaker fidelity in the past 25 years.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Reply to
Don Klipstein

Satan. I have a Uniden cordless phone with a beltclip and every time you bump into something, it tries to call the last number dialed and often succeeds. There's no way to lock out the keypad when carrying it around.

I have a Panasonic VCR remote that requires you to push two buttons to record. Unfortunately, they are the two highest buttons on the remote and if you put it down button-side down the weight of the unit presses on the two record buttons at the same time and the unit begins to record over whatever tape was in the unit. It even happens if you drop the remote the wrong way.

I have a new Nikon SLR that I have yet to figure out how to turn the flash off other than holding the pop up flash-head manually which is harder than you might think. It's certainly not intuitive.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

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