The children! Won't someone please think of the children?!!! I'd say when you have codes that go nuts and require crazy numbers of smoke detectors, you'd have to be an imbecile not to realize that it's going to lead to non-compliance. If the guy lives alone, who's children exactly is he supposed to protect?
And it is such a huge job keeping batteries in the smoke detectors. How can you expect any body to do that just to be safe.
Of course you could simplify the battery problem in couple of ways. Replace the batteries Spring and Fall or replace all the batteries when one detector starts beeping. That is so difficult.
Bill
I'm glad that at least in the USA, there doesn't seem to be the tendency to use public safety to support the economy.
Here in Manitoba, we have an NDP government, which is what Americans would probably call pro-socialist, or borderline communist.
Whenever Manitoba falls on hard economic times, the government swings into action finding ways of making the rich provide jobs. And, the easiest way to do that is to pass laws requiring even higher safety standards than we already have. For example, you simply pass a city by-law requiring all apartment blocks to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems. That keeps all the plumbers busy fitting old buildings with water sprinklers. And, you pass a city by-law requiring smoke barrier doorways to be installed on every floor before the stairwells so that smoke can't get into the stair wells in the event of a fire. That keeps all the carpenter's busy. And, of course, you pass a city by-law requiring all smoke detectors to be hard wired rather than battery operated, and that keeps all the electricians busy.
I'm all for safety, but from what I've seen, safety has been abused where I live, and it's purpose has been to create jobs rather than protect people, and it's a sickening situation where the government is looking for ways to make the rich waste their money on unnecessary improvements. Already Winnipeg has the highest fire safety standards for apartment blocks in North America, and come the next economic downturn, we will undoubtely have the highest earthquake safety standards for apartment blocks in all of North America too. The fact that Winnipeg is thousands of miles away from the nearest fault line and has never had an earthquake is no arguement against ensuring that people are safe if we do get one, and anyone who disagrees is just too greedy to realize that safety should come before profits.
Some local codes require them in bedrooms.
I'm pretty sure I've put my counter next to detectors and found no radiation, but it was on th fast setting. Longer integration may be needed.
Greg
I have an old baby Ben clock I now use for a radiation calibrator. Used to sleep next to it. Second most powerful radiator in my house. An old pentax lens has the highest count with uranium oxide coating.
Greg
Need to change brands of sugar breakfast cereal. Cut back on the frosted sugar cubes. Try Cheerios or Life, and see if that helps. Hydrate the cereal with skim milk instead of Red Bull and Monster. Carry water bottles in the car instead of using five hour energy in the toddler's bottle.
. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus
It's not what I expect anybody else to do. It's what I would prefer to do.
It is when you have 8 of them and some of them are in high ceilings that you can't reach with a small step ladder. I can see you're one of the guys that believes in big govt and more regulation, rather than personal choice.
And obviously you have no explanation for the question I posed, which is that since these are both AC and battery powered, why does the battery go out in a year, just as fast or faster than battery only powered ones? How about thinking about that instead of what I should do?
Actually I believe in safety. That seems to me to be a much more important point than whether there is some mild inconvenience. How many television reports have you see where somebody died in a fire and "there were not working smoke detectors"?
Bill
On 10/01/2014 7:47 AM, trader_4 wrote: ...
'Cuz they're a poorly designed (read "cheap to build") and don't actually cut the battery (completely) out when A/C is on nor use rechargeable batteries would be the likely cause...
I've not looked, but I'd think such a unit would be readily available altho undoubtedly at a somewhat higher price point. There are just the minimal one each floor of the old battery-powered type here as nothing's been modified since all the recent Code changes. So, that's just three and the once't a year deal isn't so bad as there are no cathedral ceilings, etc., ...
I believe in personal freedom. It's a much more important concept than inconvenience and guys like you insisting that we all have to live by your rules in our own house.
And the strawman nonsense is so typical. It's not an issue of not having smoke detectors. It's just that I said I'd prefer to just have AC powered ones that don't have battery backup. Is that so radical and unsafe? For the record, since you brought it up, despite all the laws and all the ruminating, there are still plenty of fires where people die where there aren't working smoke detectors. Evey one of them that I've seen, it was a case where there were either no smoke detectors, or battery smoke detectors with dead batteries. Not a single one where it was an AC only detector and the cause of the fatality was that it didn't have a battery backup. Since you have such strong opinions in favor of requiring battery backup you should be able to provide us with those numbers and examples where a battery backup would have made a difference.
A diode that costs maybe 10 cents has a big impact on price?
On 10/01/2014 8:51 AM, trader_4 wrote: ...
_Every_ component has an impact on price for consumer-priced goods when amplified by the numbers.
I don't _know_ it's the case precisely with the particular units but I'd venture it's a reasonable conjecture.
Do you have the actual vendor/model number handy?
Then why stop at 8? Why not 15? Why not a personal one you carry on your belt?
Four smoke detectors within 10 feet for a guy who lives alone, and has two bedrooms which are not capable of housing anyone (one is an office, the other is a storage room)? That has nothing to do with safety. It has to do with "one size fits all".
I bet you report your neighbors who tear off their mattress tags.
think of the voltage drop, too.
I don't see .6V diode drop from a 9V battery being a design challenge. The electronics is going to work on 5V or 3V anyway.
but the battery will "die" sooner.
Which, of course, has *never* been illegal. "Except by the consumer" and all. I remember being 7 or 8, hearing someone "joke" about that on TV, and being very confused because it was clear to me that the tags meant that the manufacturer and retailer couldn't remove them, but we as the final purchaser could.
This was in the late 70s/early 80s; perhaps sometime before then those words weren't on there? Or it just makes a better joke to pretend they aren't?
How so? The battery is rated at X amphours. Whether it delivers it through a diode or not is mostly insignificant. Only a very small amount of power is lost in the diode.
On 10/01/2014 11:52 AM, trader_4 wrote: ...
But what's significant is what _fraction_ of the power consumption any portion might be...if the overall is also pretty small as one would expect/it must be to have a long battery life to begin with, that "very small amount" may still be a decent fraction of the total and then the decrease in lifetime is proportional to that fraction.
Again, this is all _purely_ hypothetical w/o any other data...but if the symptom exists that the battery life doesn't appear to be any longer w/ AC powered unit than non-, it's pretty clear there must not be any real power-saving circuitry inherent in the device design (or, the overall device power consumption is quite high and therefore drains the battery at about the same rate even though there is some extension over what it would have been w/o the AC).
Let's do the math. 9V battery. .6V drop across the diode.
8.4V goes to the load. That's 7% of the voltage across the diode and hence 7% of the power dissipated, because the same current is flowing through the load and the diode. And that 7% power dissipation would only come into play when the AC is out. The rest of the time, it would be zero. You'd have a design where if the AC is lost, the battery would diminish about 7% faster. But in return, you'd have a design where the battery lasts the shelf life, not just a year. I could come up with other designs that would perform better, but a diode is simple and cheap as an example.
What's apparent is that somehow they are using the battery power as well as the AC. I can't think of other battery/AC powered devices that do that. Sump pump backup? Emergency lighting? Battery banks at the phone company?
(or, the overall
The point is there is no good reason to be drawing down the battery at all. And why not put in rechargeables? Duh! That's what they do in those other examples.
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