Smoke detectors for the elderly

[mm]

Could we make nuclear bombs out of americum? That way the radioactivity woudln't last that long. And it might be good publicity for our hemisphere.

[Nate Nagel]

Actually, wasn't the kid who made his own mini-reactor in his mom's shed using americium from discarded smoke detectors? I didn't DAGS but I'm pretty sure that he was.

nate

(my mind is a storehouse of useless factoids)

[mm]

Please ignore my previous post, which you will probably see after this one.

It looks like my bomb designing career is dead before it began.

>

[mleuck]

There's

ity of

I wouldn't call $159 per unit "gouging" for such a specialized product

[Stormin Mormon]

reposted a story about that, a while back. Someone put it on the web, too. Kid with a bunch of ambition.

[Robert Green]

Cheaper than $300 but still kinda expensive

cheers Bob

Thanks, Bob. I just don't understand why using a lower-frequency sounder adds so darn much to the cost! There HAS to be a cheaper solution and I'm going out to Sprawl-Mart and some other stores to see what I can find. This is one case where on-site shopping might very well beat out on-line shopping.

-- Bobby G.

[Robert Green]

I've come to believe that only laws that help businesses who bring buckets of cash to campaigns get passed. )-: Congress critters on both sides of the aisle are equally guilty and it will only get worse until we ban campaign contributions. Who in this world gives money to someone without expecting something in return? Yet Congress wants us to believe they are above all that. Edwards has been paying his mistress with left-over campaign funds. Ensign has been trying to bribe the husband of the woman he's having an affair with and more than a few are in jail, or heading there soon. Trust them to fix the smoke alarm problem? I wouldn't trust any of them with even a burned-out match.

The key word is "supposedly" - a lot of people bought into the idea that any regulation was bad regulation along with the fairytale that you can lower taxes but still run government effectively. Now, as a result, there's very little pre-emptive enforcement. It's only when the dead children and pets start to stack up that regulators seem to notice anything's amiss.

As I read up on this subject, research indicates that flashing lights are nearly useless in rousing someone from sleep. High frequency sounders are almost as bad. Kids and adults are apparently able to sleep through both. The lower square wave of 520Hz seems to be the best at waking people, as far as tones are concerned. Even better is to have a "bed shaker" connected to the alarm output.

The problem I face here is resistance. My friend says he's quite happy with not being able to hear the alarm, but I suspect because he's infirm and usually in a lot of pain, that he's feeling a little suicidal. I know he won't spring for a complicated security system. He already got sold an expensive system from the people that wander door-to-door selling such things (I know, I know. I already chastized him greatly for that.!) He's not likely to buy another one (he doesn't even use this one because the vendor went under. So my best hope of getting him protection is to make it cheap and easy to install.

Thanks for your input!

-- Bobby G.

[Robert Green]

Would you mind telling me (if you can reach them) what make and model they are? Are they hardwired 110VAC or battery powered? Thanks!

-- Bobby G.

[Robert Green]

What he said! (-:

-- Bobby G.

[Robert Green]

Thanks. I knew the problem was bad, but apparently as many as 70 million Americans having high-frequency hearing loss, according to that site. That's a pretty big chunk of people to leave out of the design process. Maybe there was a patent issue involved.

I never thought about the problem until I was standing next to someone who couldn't hear a peep of what I thought was ear-drum damaging loud, but then again, I don't design smoke detectors. I'm glad that after 20 or 30 years worth of sales, something's finally being done to address the problem as indicated by the URL you posted.

I'd still like to find 3 or 4 battery powered smokes or combo smoke/CO's that don't need hardwiring and don't cost more than $50 each. Hopefully someone can tell me for sure which brands make that lower frequency squarewave 520Hz sound that's being mandated.

It sounds like I need to keep my fingers crossed until the new models come out and hope that he doesn't burn himself up before then . . . naw . . . couldn't live with myself if something bad happened in the mean time. I'll keep looking. At least I have a new search term: 520Hz. I expect that to help a lot in finding what I am looking for. Thanks again for the URL. (time passes) - not as helpful as I thought. It seems only two alarm makers have such units, and they're way overpriced compared to traditional battery detectors. And I mean waaaaay over. I can get 10 normal alarms for the price of one of the specialized low frequency units. If there's anything I hate, it's gouging the sick and disabled. This is a perfect example. Smoke detectors, as the new rules make clear, should be able to wake most people up, not just one demographic.

-- Bobby G.

[dpb]

As a NucE, I found the reports on that incident less than satisfying--absolutely no indications of what levels were actually found or actual numeric quantities of any of the materials to the point of determining at all what level of hazard might have been.

At the time I looked for any NRC Region incident reports and found none; my general conclusion is locals got carried away w/ chance to use their gear and run some training exercises as much (or perhaps even more) as it was a real problem...

The "several times background" kinds of numbers sound ominous but in reality, given what background levels typically are and that Am is an alpha-emitter so it's radius of being a problem even in open air is on the order of a few cm at most the hazard is localized at most. There was simply not enough other hard data to estimate what level of activations he could possibly have achieved but imo highly unlikely to have been much at all although theoretically possible some could have occurred. The Be actually was probably the most personally hazardous material as it is quite toxic in low quantities (not radioactive, poisonous-style toxic).

As for the kid's counter showing contamination around the neighborhood, I'd say the odds were/are very high he was simply carrying it around with him unwittingly on clothing, shoes, hands, etc., and measuring it rather than a direct line-of-sight measurement from the backyard area. Or, of course, given the stuff he did w/o adequate respirators, etc., there's also a good chance he had ingested/inhaled enough that it was an internal body loading he was measuring.

--

[Robert Green]

Thanks for the link but I need to find something less pricey. I just CAN NOT believe that with all the smoke detectors out there, that there isn't anything except multi-hundred dollar units that can make a sound that hard-of-hearing people can hear. I'd like to do this for $120 max. The larger issue is the millions of older Americans on tight budgets who can hardly afford to eat. They're definitely NOT going to spend $1000's or even $100's on fancy smoke detectors, nor should they.

Thanks for your input. I'm betting that if I had to go that route, I could get out some copper-clad perf board and my soldering iron and build something very similar to what you are describing for a lot less. But still, I shouldn't have to. Fortunately, the industry seems to have finally realized the problem and are taking steps to correct it. I just hope my friend doesn't turn himself into a crispy critter before then. He likes to sit in his armchair, smoking a pipe and he tends to doze off a lot.

-- Bobby G.

[HeyBub]

Yeah, for every perceived or possible problem, there's got to be a government solution. If not, the government will study the need and solve some other problem.

[Nate Nagel]

There's a lot of liability when it comes to fire safety. "Good" and "cheap" do sometimes occur together, but less often than not.

There are plug-in Gentex models with strobes as well, I know you are focused on audible notification appliances, but visual appliances have been the traditional solution for the hard of hearing. 177cd is pretty freaking bright. However, those do run about $100 apiece retail, and there's not much getting around that.

nate

[Lee B]

I've followed some of this thread, and got curious and went googling for "smoke alarm" and "low frequency" together. I found this site -

. I think their alarm was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but two points on their own site that might help: one of the models is $159 with a $39 instant rebate and free shipping. (Of course, they may have changed that and not updated the page, who knows). That's the lowest price models; others are more.

The site also had another interesting angle - their section on veterans says "Attention, U.S. Veterans, you may qualify to receive a Loudenlow? Hearing Impaired smoke alarm for free via your local Veterans Affairs office".

Good luck. And good for you for watching out for your friend!

[mm]

If he does this when he's 15 or so, imagine what size reactor he'll make when he's 30.

I was at hamfest last week and someone had had a centrifuge for sale. It held six big testtubes.

[zzznot]

Wow! I just finished sending off an email to Kidde about a new smoke alarm I just installed for Mom, with the same concern!

This Loudenlow looks pretty good, but not cheap.

What is wrong with the major manufacturers, the low frequency signal might cost another dollar or two to implement, you would think it would be offered.

Still have to read most of the thread.

Thanks all.

Josh

[Robert Green]

To Josh and anyone else reading here, I wanted to say I found something that fits my needs exactly after a few hours of searching the web and then my local brick and mortar big box stores because I wanted to buy one today. While I nearly got arrested at TarZhey for trying to listen to the alarms before I bought them, a nearby competitor had what I needed:

Mark's suggestion to Google on "talking smoke detectors" lead to the above URL, and although they had a lot of info, I couldn't tell what the sounder sounded like. (You'd think they could post a small MP3 or WAV of the sound or the voice on their website in this, the 21st century!)

I decided I wanted to try it because even if sounder was too high pitched, the talking part might wake him. I also thought that it might be louder since it used AA's and not 9V batteries. To my surprise, when I brought it to his house and tested it out, the sounder was very much lower in tone than his existing smokes and he could hear it with ease.

So, problem solved!!! I only bought the one, for a little over $40 with tax, but it also includes a CO monitor so mentally, it fits what *I* think a good smoke detector should cost: $20 each. I don't give it high marks for intelligibility, though. When it goes off, it's the tone, a little silence, and then a man mumbling in an urgent tone. "Warning . . . Warning . . . mo . . ected . . . in . . . ing . . . room." The alarm tells you which room the alert is coming from and what the danger is (smoke or CO), which I think is mostly a gimmick but may prove useful.

I am going to see if I can find a discount for the other two I need to purchase to cover his house completely. I think he needs one in the garage, the kitchen and the bedroom and maybe another one, but I feel incredibly relieved that he's got at least one unit he can hear. It's also got another issue I hope I can fix with a piece of black tape. It's got a feature that allows silencing or testing via any household IR remote and the unit has triggered twice accidentally as a result of a reflected IR beam. It's mainly an issue of selecting the proper location, but that may be trickier than it seems for some installations.

Thanks to everyone who chipped in! Nothing like actually accomplishing the day's mission.

-- Bobby G.

[Tom Horne]

I once helped a fellow firefighter rig up a home fire sprinkler system for his father in law who the entire family was sure would immolate himself by smoking a pipe in his favorite chair just prior to bed. Since we did all of the work ourselves the whole sprinkler system cost less then the final piece. That piece was a smoke detector that had a plunger to break the glass bulb that held the sprinkler over that chair closed. Twenty years on and his father in law had died of heart failure in his sleep so who did that detector save. It saved the alcoholic mother of the single mom with two children who had bought the small bungalow were his step father had lived. It also saved the home owner and her two children of course so I'd say that the work was worth our time. Grandma was transported to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation, a small burn to her hand, and a mild case of hypothermia from the forty gallons a minute of cold water that had flowed over her.

-- Tom Horne

[zzznot]

Lowes' web site lists it, I'll see if the local store has it.

Can this be installed battery-only, or does it need 120v install? I cannot tell from any online description I can find!

Thanks.

Josh