Headzup. Fire Killed Four

Smoke alarms & CO alarms save lives.

Only if they have fresh batteries. Otherwise, go hard wire.

Wonder if they have any hard wired with a backup battery

I have a customer with two battery units on his ceiling that have gone dead. Problem, he has a high ceiling and they are 50 feet up. Chuckle.

Some one with a house with a 50 foot ceiling should be able to afford the battery replacement. Or move the detectors much lower.

Smoke goes to the top first.

Oh he an afford it. Does not wantto afford it is another issue.

He is going to have to call in a contractor.

Oh and he does not like the expense of a lithium batteries, so he uses alkalines.

He is just cheap on certain things

Yes, they do have hard wired with battery backup. I'll try to see if Consumer Reports has recent ratings. Hard wired ones in a house are all supposed to howl if one senses problems.

I just replaced a 2006 smoke detector that was acting up and discovered that there is now available - - units with ~ 10 year battery life. < smoke detector - not sure about CO >

Hard-wired with battery backup were available once .. John T.

Smoke alarms don't work an neither do CO alarms.

Plus if you're in the same room, they both cause you to breathe more CO2 and that's really bad.

People may die from fires and from CO poisoning, but no more than die from disease. Everyone dies eventually. It's the makers of those detectors and the publicity and advertising which have so many people thinking they are worthwhile.

Plus most people survive house fires.

Fire is not that bad.

Gee, I detect a note of sarcasm.

Just you see--when the weather warms up, fire will be gone. Like magic.

Cindy Hamilton

My ceilings are only 8 feet high, but lately it's a pain to get a ladder or a chair even for that.

And my AC smoke detector doesn't have a battery backup, but there is almost no correleation here betwween fires and power failures. Unless maybe you have a fire in the fireplace when there is no power for the furnace, but I hear that draws more heat out of the house than it adds.

And yes, when I would pan fry something with oil or fat in the pan, it would set the smoke alarm off, and that would soon set the burglar akarn off, annoying my neighbors, and then the burglar alarm monitor company would call me. After 3 or 4 t imes, I solved that by setting the top burner at medium-hot instead of hot. It's enough to cook with, but doesn't make that invisible smoke that was setting off the smaoke alarm.

I had wired the coil of a relay across the buzzer of the smoke alarm and connected the contacts to my home burglar alarm. Yes, they say not to mess with such things but I don't care.

And btw, the AC smoke alarm is 41 years old and seems to work as quickly as it ever did. .

It isn't that a smoke detector suddenly goes defective at 10 years and 1 day. They begin to become less reliable and __ most people __ want to maintain the best level of reliability in their life-saving devices - especially when it's ~ a $ 12 item .. John T.