Smoke detectors for the elderly

I was at an elderly friend's house the other day when the smoke alarm went off. It was quite loud and I reacted instantly to the noise. My friend, a former Army marksman in his 70's, who's suffering from profound high frequency hearing loss, heard nothing!!!

Then I started looking around for alarms that used lower frequency sounders but the only thing I could find were specially converted smoke detectors that cost $300!!!!

I'm wondering why COTS alarms operate at such a high sound frequency, especially when it's well known that older adults lose their high frequency hearing first. I have been thinking of just unsoldering the Sonalert sounders in low priced alarms and replacing them with lower frequency sounders, but that could compromise the detector's ability to sense smoke if the replacement sounder has sufficiently different electrical characteristics.

Does anyone know of a *reasonably* priced smoke detector whose sounder is audible to people with high frequency hearing loss? I'd like to buy a couple of such detectors for him, but the price on the only unit I've found would bring the bill to over $1200 for four detectors, and that's just unreasonable. I know what goes into making a smoke detector and 10x the cost of the parts still wouldn't bring the price that high.

The idea that smokes use sounders that can't be heard by a lot of elderly people seems pretty unreasonable to me as well.

Surely someone out there makes a smoke detector or combo smoke/CO detector (even better) that makes a sound people with typical hearing loss could hear a little better.

BTW, we can skip flashing light smoke detectors. BT, DT, GTS! He's got a phone ringer/flasher that he never hears or sees. The unit's flasher can't really be seen in daytime easily and the electronic ringer again uses a tone in the 5000Hz and above range and is inaudible to him. FWIW, based on some simple tests I did with CoolEdit, a PC program that allows you to create any audible tone, he can hear most stuff below 4000Hz. Yes he has a hearing aid but no, he does not sleep with it in.

Thanks in advance for your help.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green
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Cheaper than $300 but still kinda expensive

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cheers Bob

Reply to
fftt

Seems to me someone in our dysfunctional Congress needs to address this issue. Or maybe Consumer Reports or AARP could launch a campaign. We supposedly have Consumer Product Safety working for us, but they seem to be asleep except for traces of lead in Chinese toy paint. On the technical side, what do you audio experts think of having a raunchy sounding dual tone that would generate a beat frequency that would be even more (maybe disagreeably) audible?

Joe

Reply to
Joe

The wired smoke detectors in my house are not high pitched at all and I'm sure the builder didn't pay more then a small amount for them. They make a loud buzzing sound, sort of like the emergency broadcast sound you probably have heard on your TV and radio.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

Robert,

That issue has been addressed by the NFPA. See here:

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Maybe someone in ASA can get you a deal on some units.

Reply to
G. Morgan

Ashton Crusher wrote: ...

Maybe you could ferret out the manufacturer for OP????

--

Reply to
dpb

Can you not find an optical alarm, that indicates by blinking a strobe light on/off slowly (at whatever frequency is likeliest to catch the attention of deaf people)?

Reply to
Don Phillipson

I have the same problem with my amplified phone. It's a trimline, the volume control on the handset. The ringer is some high pitched chirp that I can't hear with my hearing aids out. I put a splitter, and an old mechanical Ma Bell phone, which I can hear sometimes.

I know of no low pitch smoke alarm, though that's much needed.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I'm all for it. Joe for congress!

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Our local tv station did a story a few years ago about small children not waking to the loud hi-pitched alarms. They even did a test and showed several small kids sleeping right thru an alarm right in their rooms. They showed one that actually had a recorded voice of the child's mom yelling for them to get up and get out of the house and kids seemed to hear and respond to that. Here's a story on 'talking smoke detectors':

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You can get more with a Google on 'talking smoke detectors'.

Reply to
Mark

I have slept through smoke alarm when it awoke everyone else in the house. That alarm used to sound the first time or two that the furnace came on in the fall - accumulated dust burning? No smoke detectable to us.

When my kids were young teens, they used to have their radio on very softly at night, tuned to pop music station. There was a very popular song at the time that had a background sound that sounded like "maaaaa"; I normally could barely tell the radio was on in their room, but I would wake at night when that song played. My subconcious thought my children were calling me :o)

Reply to
norminn

If you have hardwired 120VAC "tandem" smokes (the kind where if one goes off they all make noise) as are required in new houses, you can get one with relay contacts and the relay will follow the sounder (that is, the contacts will change state when any of the detectors is in alarm, not just the one with the contacts) then you can do any kind of homebrew sounder you want. Also there are versions available with 177cd strobe lights, these are usually used in ADA hotel rooms and sleeping areas of apartments for the hard of hearing. Gentex is probably the best known mfgr of these.

If someone is hard of hearing and has a house with hardwired 120VAC smokes, I would highly recommend looking into replacing the smokes with the ones with ADA strobes. Off the top of my head I think the current Gentex model is 7309, but there's different versions with and without relay contacts and for wall and ceiling mount. Not cheap, but if you've already demonstrated that the existing detectors aren't notifying the occupant...

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

OT but my mother was a widow and took comfort that her sons lived at home, me in highschool and my brother in medical school. She was more worried about getting sick than about intruders.

It was expected to stay out late, 2 or 3 for the hs graduation dance. I came home about them and found my mother asleep so I went to sleep too. She woke up and called my name, for a while iirc, and neither I nor my brother heard anything. We just kept sleeping. I think the same thing happened another night. So much for the security she had thought we gave her. (Tben I went off to college in another city and my borther went off to an internship.)

Reply to
mm

sorry, I was thinking of 7139 (the old part number was 7109 and it had a steady horn sound, the new one does a temporal Code-3 pattern)

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7139CS-(W or C) is what you'd want. W or C denotes wall or ceiling mount (the light pattern of the strobe is different between the two.) They include an on-board 9V battery backup for functionality during an AC power failure.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

They do? I have an AC smoke alarm and I've had a couple battery ones, and they seem to be mid-range. (I've played the piano for 50 years, but still have little idea what note they are, or even what octave, but they still seem midrange. I'll guess, middle C. The nearby A is

440, so C must be 500 to 550 cps.)

It sounds like a metallic kazoo, or a trombone at its mid-pitch.

Have they switched to little, high frequency sonalerts. They used to use ones as big as demitasse coffe cup. Bigger than that. More like a tea cup at a Chinese restaurant. They don't use that anymore? The bigger they are, the lower the pitch, right?

I would say to look for old ones, but one of the two styles of smoke detector doesn't work well after it is old, they say. Doesn't the other kind still work well when it is old? Which is which?

If you look at mouser.com I believe they sell a wide range of sonalerts and may give frequencies and probalby give specs. Best to use a high-speed connection becauase last I looked two years ago, every search dl's a pdf rep of the page in the catalog. So it takes a few seconds even with lo-speed dsl. But if they sell something, it seems they have every model of it, by more than one maker.

Well, they don't seem to use pdf anymore, and it loads much quicker

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but there don't seem to be pictures on this page, plus you will have to click on data sheet for specs.

P&M, because you're being nice to an old person.

>
Reply to
mm

there's two kinds of smokes, ionization and photoelectric. Ionization are the ones that use a small pellet of americium and once it loses its radioactivity it's toast. Photoelectric uses a LED and a photocell to measure obscuration. But that said most mfgrs. of smoke detectors will recommend replacement after 10 years or even less no matter what technology it uses. That's not saying that it won't work, but they're not willing to go on record saying that they will.

nate

(has very old smoke detectors in his house, and should know better. Do as I say, not as I do.)

Reply to
Nate Nagel

One good answer is an alarm panel with the output connected to a siren/voice speaker driver. Our system has a piercing siren sound then says *FIRE*, *FIRE*, *FIRE*---LEAVE IMMEDIATELY in a commanding male voice, then a lower frequency staccato siren sound then repeats. There is enough noise to get most anyones attention.

It uses all standard off the shelf stuff.

The other advantage is that the smoke alarms are powered from the panel which provides supervision and also power during an AC power outage.

Reply to
George

Am241 has a half life of 458 years so that really isn't much of an issue .

Photoelectric uses a LED and a photocell to

Reply to
George

In my previous home there were 110V smokes in each room they were interconnected and with 9V backup. They had very low-pitch buzzers -- definitely not piezos. I don't recall the make or model and I suspect they were pretty old. I replaced them with System Sensor detectors.

You've probably seen the outrageously overpriced detectors from "LoudnLow" -- a company that makes it's money by gouging hearing deficient victims. There's a company that makes a low-frequency sounder which responds to the high-pitch noise from conventional smokes. It's called Telex. Their product is also pricey but at least you won't be out $1200. I can't speak for the quality of their product as I haven't tried one. Here's a link:

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Hope that helps.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

There are two smoke alarms out there that allow the user to record an alert that sounds when the alarm goes off. Usually, it's a voice alert, to awaken children to the sound of their parent's voice. But there'd be nothing stopping you from recording a lower-frequency tone to use as an alarm sound. Look on the internet for a sound your friend can hear, and that sounds alarming enough to awaken him, and record that.

SignalONE Voice Safety Alarm

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KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector
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Reply to
Hell Toupee

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