house smoke alarm false warning

[John Rumm]

Its probably a case of allowing for the loss of battery capacity with age over the 10 year life of the alarm.

[Ghostrecon]

when we moved in (pre prat p luckily) we found

of the ring main fuses appesrs to have become overheated the cause ... OMG we put a new 14 way split CSU in with a separate ring main for the kitchen appliances and a few other things including a dedicated smoke detector circuit .. hardly obsessed :-)

[ARWadsworth]

Well done, and that is not obsessed .

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Surely you don't let parrots play with matches?

[Ghostrecon]

ours definitly beep and the green led visible inside turns red iirc - usually notice the green leds on my way to bed - incidently I have added a

2amp 3 pin socket on our 'dedicated' circuit which powers a 2watt led in a corner cabinet on our stair winder so its very obvious if the circuit has tripped

[Bob Eager]

We run a battery backed emergency light on the stairs. If the circuit trips, that comes on - as it doesn in a power cut.

[John Rumm]

Ours (EI professional branded) have a green LED that's on with mains present and not without. They don't beep until the internal rechargeable battery has run down.

[John Rumm]

Yup, put one at the top of our stairs on the end of the smoke circuit - as you say it does both jobs quite nicely.

[Dave Liquorice]

Thought there would be variations... Er, how does it beep when the battery is flat? Or can the battery maintain the alarm for days/weeks but the beep doesn't start until the power has been absent for say

Like the idea of the emergency light on the smokes circuit. There is going to be a non-maintained light above the stairs here, not sure what circuit that is going to be on. Don't think it's wired in the red 3C&E that the smokes are.

[John Rumm]

With ours, I installed them without mains initially (i.e. working back from the lights to the power source) and only got half in prior to getting sidetracked for a bit. They ran for a couple of months before starting to moan. So I had to give them a quick temporary power source to keep them happy!

As it turned out it was the easiest way to do it on mine. There is a lamp either end of the landing, but it transpires the one at the stairs end only has the switched feed fed through to it, so it would not have been usable for the emergency lamp feed. Tacking it onto the smoke circuit seemed like a useful compromise although ideally I would have liked it to illuminate on a trip of the upstairs lighting circuit as well.

[Lieutenant Scott]

Jesus christ. That sounds more like something in a commercial building. Do you also have an air raid shelter?

[Lieutenant Scott]

From what I've heard Prat P isn't very thorough anyway, it's a bit over-worried about. I have seen the state of the wiring in a house that passed - wrong colours used everywhere, live in neutral wires, overheated cables in the loft, etc, etc.

Just how much power do you use?!?!?

[Lieutenant Scott]

They get hold of anything!

Actually it's the heating. So as they are content and breed, I heat the room to tropical standards. With an electric heater.

[Lieutenant Scott]

to tropical standards. With an electric heater.

I didn't bloody well finish typing. When will programmers learn that keyboard shortcuts are a BAD idea?

Et continuez..... Gas heaters use oxygen and might release fumes. A balanced flue gas heater involves expense and fitting bother and uses space.

[Ghostrecon]

not much - Ive rarely seen more than 5Kw at one time since monitoring the energy usage, but previous owners cooked with electricity, had dishwasher, tumble dryer and washing machine - odd arangement here - the two ring mains are right and left in the house not up and down. The number of mbs was more about isolation than power usage Non-Rcd Cooker - used for socket for fridge freezer Immersion heater upstairs Lighting ring Downstairs lighting ring Smoke alarms

RCD uses 2 slots KItchen and u-room ring Lefthand sockets Righthand sockets Garage ring (converted to bedroom)+Shed Loft lighting (and outside light- hence the rcd) Garage and u room lighting

• 1 spare = 14 way

[Lieutenant Scott]

Why have an RCD on some stuff but not others?

BTW I take it the smoke alarms are ok on batteries, because all the mains can fail due to a fire in the wire before your meter. Happened to my neighbour due to loose connection. Electric board too stupid to fuse this wire at substation.

[The Other Mike]

I find that hard, no make that impossible, to believe.

[Lieutenant Scott]

What don't you believe? The fire? He had the wire going into the eaves, it was an old house. The hot wire ignited the rafters.

The non-fusing? If there was a fuse, the substation wouldn't have hummed very loudly and thrown sparks for a full 10 minutes. Also the electric board guy confirmed it when I asked him. He said it was "too expensive to fit them".

[John Rumm]

Some circuits (lighting for example) pose very little electrocution risk, but do pose a significant safety risk when interrupted so having them sharing a RCD with many other circuits is not ideal.

Some appliances typically exhibit high leakage currents, and are hence likely to sensitise an RCD without gaining much safety benefit.

Yup they are usually fine on batteries...

[charles]

and what sort of fuse would you fit at the substation? Houses aren't fed via radial circuits from there. A feed leaves the sub and tens of houses ae fed off that one feed. Certainly our sub, mounted on a pole has a fuse on the output and it used to blow when there was an intermittent short under the road.

There is, of course, a "company fuse" located in the customers premises before the meter. If your description of the fault was correct, that should have blown. Unless, sunny jim had tapped into the cable before there to get free electricity.