Smoke alarm with Voice Alerts. FAQ

Why hard-wired ? John T.

can i make it say what i want it to say

Why not hard wired? Most houses built in the last 30+ years have been built like that. Batteries are for backup and last much longer.

Maybe I'm out-of-the-loop but the last time I bought smoke / CO detectors - the stand-alone models were

10-year units. Why buy a wired-in unit that is replaced every 10 years ? I can't _speak_ to the talking units .. but in general I avoid the unnecessary gimmicks. John T.

To replace the hard-wired one that wore out recently. I also have a couple battery ones. Battery and hard-wired use\ different methods, radiation and visual, so they find different kinds of fire output (smouldering versus fire) and there are other differences too, so one of each is a good idea.

Yes, my house is 45 years old this year and came with one on the second floor hall. Despite the things I read about them working for 10 years or less, this one worked fine for almost 45 years. No fires but I again set it off less only a few months ago by overheating oil in a fry pan. (After that last time, I finally stopped using High for oil in fry pans.)

But on a hot day this summer, I left a fan running when I went out for a few hours. I regretted this and while I was gone worried it could start a fire (no more likely than when I'm home, but when I'm home, I'd notice.) When I did get home and opened the front door, I found the smoke alarm making a lot of noise, and when I got upstairs it was really loud, and after a while, it seemed to get even louder. And when I got on a stepstool so I could stop it, it was almost unbearable.

But the fan that I worried about, which was only about 3 years old, was still spinning, still blowing, not on fire and not hot at all. It was quite a large coincidence that the only day in 45 years that I left the house worrying about a fire was the first day in 45 years that the smoke alarm failed. I keep thinking maybe it wasn't a coincidence, that one of the two parts of this caused the other, but I can't find a way that would be so. Is there one?

45 x 365 is 16425. Maybe it's not quite right but my first estimation is that the odds of this happening at random were 1 in 16,425. And the odds I would be out of the house when it happened are over 3x that.

Good point, the extra margin of safety is a gimmick.

From Kidde: Hard wired smoke alarms are mains-powered and include a battery as a backup in case of a power failure. As it’s unlikely that both the power and battery will fail at the same time, hard wired smoke alarms offer an extremely reliable form of protection. Furthermore, because hardwired smoke alarms are connected to the power supply, they will sound indefinitely until they are turned off.

It's been a few years since I replaced detectors - but - if I remember correctly - the power source does not dictate the detection .. dunno .. It might be best to simply contact your local fire dept. and follow their advice - they're only polishing the truck and would love to help out. John T.

YOu don't remember correctly OR you don't remember fully OR you never heard what they used to say. But the blurb from Kidde that Ed quoted seems to mean they've changed their mind (and now theire mind matches your recollection). It's possible one got better so it equalled what the other method did, OR it's possible they were lying for the years they said that having each kind was better than only one kind. I hope it's not the second.

As an aside, it doesn't seem essential that battery operated were based on radiation and 110v ones were optical, but maybe using radiation enabled the battery ones to last longer on their little batteries, which optical might require more power, which is available from house current.

This implies that the battery in a battery version can be drained. I had hoped/assumed that the chirping started when there was sstill enough juice to aound long enough to wake everyone. I don't see why they have to sound more than 30 minutes. And maybe they do, so maybe the bit above about sounding indefinitely is a feature of no value, that they mention only because they have no other reason to sell 110v alarms I hope that is not true.

This is distressing, that they don't include the big reason that one of each kind, 110v and 9v, used to be recommended. Unless they talk about that somewhere else.

"The main benefit from hardwired models comes from having two sources of power. Not only do they run on batteries, but they also have a connection to your home's electricity. With regular models, you have to deal with changing the battery and hope they'll be okay when a fire starts." Another hit that currently claims no more for hardwired.

And another: "Hardwired Alarms plug into your home's preexisting system. Hardwired detectors come equipped with a battery backup that will continue to operate should your home lose power. Having two sources of power enhances peace of mind, elevating the hardwired smoke detector."

Another hit was about "What are the pros and cons with hard wired and radio fire alarm systems?" Radio is another story, for another day, and doesn't apply to me.

I see that what I called visual and optical, they call photoelectric. I'm pretty sure everyone understood what I meant.

It took a while but I finally found pages that support what I said Find &&&& below.

Some smoke detectors use very small amounts of radioactive material to detect smoke. While they are safe to use in your home, never tamper with an ionization smoke detector. Replace the batteries in your smoke detectors every year.

For the general public, smoke detector sources present a trivial risk, even if abused or eaten. EATEN!!!!!

How do I know if my smoke detector is photoelectric or ionization? Determining which type of smoke alarm you currently have can be difficult. If you find anything mentioning radioactive materials, a model number with an “I” or any mention of Americium-241 on the alarm's label, it is an ionization alarm. If you find a “P,” it is a photoelectric alarm.Mar 10, 2020 ----This implies that it is no longer true that if they run only on a battery, they are ionoization, and if they run on house ccurrent, they are photoelectic. Very strange. I wonder if it's truly no longer true and which kind broke out of its limits.

&&&&& Is there a smoke detector without ionization? Photoelectric smoke alarms are generally more responsive to fires that begin with a long period of smoldering (called “smoldering fires”). How they work: Photoelectric-type alarms aim a light source into a sensing chamber at an angle away from the sensor. -----Aha, finally something that sayw what I said here. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) It goes on: For each type of smoke alarm, the advantage it provides may be critical to life safety in some fire situations. Home fatal fires, day or night, include a large number of smoldering fires*** and a large number of flaming fires. You can not predict the type of fire you may have in your home or when it will occur. Any smoke alarm technology, to be acceptable, must perform acceptably for both types of fires in order to provide early warning of fire at all times of the day or night and whether you are asleep or awake.

For best protection, use both types of smoke alarm technologies

For best protection, it is recommended both (ionization and photoelectric) technologies be used in homes. In addition to individual ionization and photoelectric alarms, combination alarms that include both technologies in a single device are available. [I haven't seen any that mention using both. Probably expensive and they push the cheap ones. Or they're all like that but they don't mention it. Unlikely.]

***A neighbor had a smoke alarm that was going off for weeks. This would have been the wired one. But they couldn't find a problem and they thought the alarm was broken. Eventually the house caught on fire, and it burned out their kitchen and all the appliances, and could have burned the whole house down. --- This is why you need a wired one.

Photoelectric smoke alarms respond much faster (15 to 50 minutes faster) to smoldering fires – fires which move more slowly but produce the most smoke, the element of residential fires most responsible for fatalities – than ionization alarms. Ionization smoke alarms generally perform slightly faster (30-90 seconds) to fast flame fires – fires with flames which spread quickly – than photoelectric alarms. The NFPA acknowledges that a well-designed photoelectric alarm will usually outperform ionization alarms in all fire situations, regardless of type and material. During smoldering fires, ionization alarms failed to give sufficient egress time more frequently than photoelectric alarms failed to do so. During fast-flame fires, ionization alarms failed to provide sufficient egress time more frequently than photoelectric alarms failed to do so. Ionization alarms are responsible for 97% of “nuisance alarms” – false alarms – and are thus much more likely to be disabled all together than other types of smoke alarms. The NFPA acknowledges the significant superiority of photoelectric smoke alarms over ionization alarms with regards to false alarm susceptibility.

----Again, this is why you need a photoelectric alarm, and I think all of them are hard-wired. See my reply to Hubops 3rd post for speculation about that part.

It continues at Which Smoke Alarm is Best?

Well, yeah... You probably got to the first one from a menu selection or an external link and the page parameters are in the 'smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1' part.

I hit a weird one last week. I got an email asking if I could answer a question about some ice spikes I bought last year. The question was 'what size are they?' When I went to the page he'd referenced there was no pilldown for sizes. When I went to the link from my previous order, there was the pulldown. Other than the missing selection box and the vendors were different the two pages looked identical.

I posted a long one in reply to Ed, so here's more in reply to your post.

You Replace a Hardwired Smoke Alarm with a Battery Smoke Alarm? If your home was built after 1986, it will have at least one hard wired smoke alarm connected directly to your electrical panel. It is not acceptable to replace a hard wired alarm with one that is battery operated. A home must maintain at least the same level of protection as originally required. It is the law. -- At least in Canada

Are ionization smoke detectors being phased out? While ionization smoke alarms are extremely common—many sources cite 90% of homes as having them, though I suspect the number varies from country to country—some jurisdictions have effectively banned them, requiring homes to use a different type of smoke alarm.Jan 8, 2022 --- Written in Canada. The reason? Ionization smoke alarms may not be as reliable as we keep being told...... Meanwhile, on the Government of Canada webpage for fire safety in your home, on the website of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, and the City of Montreal, there is no mention of the different technologies. .....Meanwhile, some jurisdictions are now mandating for new residential smoke alarms to be photoelectric only. This is the case of New Zealand, Australia’s Northern Territory and Queensland, the American state of Vermont, and the City of Albany, California.

an ionization smoke alarm, there is a tiny bit of americium, about

0.29 microgram, which is roughly one thousandth the weight of a grain of salt. We are talking an itty-bitty amount, but enough that it functions as part of a detector. Over time, this americium decays. It loses two protons and two neutrons as a bundle called an alpha particle. This is a type of radioactivity. Inside the smoke alarm, these lost alpha particles slam into molecules that are present in the ambient air, namely oxygen and nitrogen, and those molecules lose electrons in the process. What happens when an electrically neutral molecule, like oxygen, loses electrons? The negatively charged electrons go one way and the rest of the molecule becomes positively charged. We end up with ions. The electricity feeding the smoke alarm (either from a battery or from being plugged into the electrical system of the house)**** eeps two plates electrically charged. The ions in the air are thus attracted to one of these plates and start to move in one direction. We now have a tiny current inside the smoke alarm. When smoke enters the smoke alarm, these nitrogen and oxygen ions created by the americium’s alpha radiation attach themselves to the smoke particles. The ions slow down and get carried away. And the tiny current that was flowing flows no more. This is what triggers the alarm. ****[implying -- but certainly not proving -- that there are 110v ionization alarms. I sure wouldn't want to buy one of th ose since my reason was to get photoelectric.]

Before you begin eyeing your smoke alarm with anxiety, thinking about the radioactive heart it contains, do know that these alpha particles, unlike the gamma particles that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk, are mostly harmless in this context. They are typically blocked by a piece of paper and they turn into stable atoms after travelling a few centimeters in the air. The plastic of the smoke alarm traps them in and the amount of radiation is insignificant. Some of the food we eat, like bananas, is also naturally radioactive, but it’s the dose that makes the poison.

Aha,

one which was on my list of potential purchases is hardwired and ionization. That's because they no longer recommend battery powered unless it's a 10 year lithium. Otherwise, it whoudl be AC powered with some sort of bakcup battery.

one is photoelectric, but it only says that in the Technical Details section, not in the features that are listed much earlier, to the right of hte pictures. And also where it compares it to 3 other models. The one above, the ionization one, listed that in the features, the first feature in fact. the vendors must think that's a selling point, even though the McGill article thinks they're not as good. AHA, in the features section, it says "ENHANCED SENSING TECHNOLOGY" but only in the video does it say advanced photoelectric sensing. Photoelectric must not be a hot word. Maybe because of the photoelectric eyes that opened doors 50 years ago????? Maybe it's not new enough.

one,also onlin the details section and where it compares it to 3 other models, but I often don't look there. AHA, in the features section, it says "ENHANCED SENSING TECHNOLOGY" but only in the video does it say advanced photoelectric sensing.

one I'm leaning to buying. It's interconnectable and I have nothing to interconnect it with, but they don't seem to charge much for that feature.

FWIW, they do have one or more with both ionization and photoelectric,

the mcgill article and maybe one other said you got little extra by using both and the mcgill article said he read once that they lessen the senistivity or require both sensor to alert. He said he was going to check on that. But I don't need the ion part because I have two ionization alarms, one that's on top of the refrigerator (a bad place to put it I read because it's so near the stove, but if it sounds I can put it inside the fridge.

How's your hearing? Can you hear the frequency of the noise the smoke alarm makes?

Excellent point. I probably wouldn't hear a stand-alone smoke detector going off in my garage if I was in the master bedroom...which is why I installed hardwired interconnected alarms.

First Alert BRK 3120B Hardwired Interconnected (if installed on a dedicated 3-wire fire alarm circuit) Photoelectric and Ionization Smoke Alarm Battery Backup

"

" I think someone makes wireless interconnected models but I don't trust wireless stuff.

IIRC correctly, some people can sleep through an alarm but respond to a voice.

That is my reason for using Smoke Detectors with Voice Alert. I have very poor hearing and can barely hear the beep, even when I am standing right under the alarm.

By the way it is best to test your alarms monthly, just to be sure they are still working.

Bill

If user needs an electrician to install in-code AC at the location of the detector, it would take several decades of replacement detectors to equal the expense of the electrician.

As an aside, I don't see the advantage of a voice alarm vs. the usual klaxon. Any sentient person would realize that if the detector alarms and there's no obvious smoke or fire, the reason is dangerously high CO level. In either case, the safest thing to do is exit the area immediately and call the fire department. Personally, I don't like all or nothing CO detectors. They usually don't sound until the CO is at an emergency high level. I'd rather see a numerical display so I can be aware if there's an early, smaller leak.

I'm about ready to give up on smoke detectors. I've had enough of repeated false positives-- the damned things going off at 3:00 in the morning.

I tried Kidde, tried First Alert, several different models-- same problem with all. They're good for maybe 2-3 years, then fail.

True. OTOH, if you are in the garage and the kitchen is on fire, the electrician cost would be a bargain.

Codes vary by state but some required hard wired since 1973, others into the 90s.

My wife still occasionally has the habit of testing ours with either air fryer or inadequate stove ventilation.

I just replaced one and with good advice did not put it on the ceiling but high on the wall.

Those with the 10 year lithium batteries must be tossed but others that take a 9 volt battery last longer but take battery changes.

The Co's must be replaced as they deteriorate chemically.