OT: Smoke Dectector puzzle...

Well it is sort of hot in Atlanta. I buy my oil filters 6-10 at a time. Enough for two years of oil changes. I am probably using the wrong syntehtic oil but it is too much of a pain to buy 4 gallons at a time at the oil wholesaler. Stupid whine there but semi conflicting labels on the oil. Now I am abusing my tractor engine. I really should not do that as it does not get its annual oil change. Next time it is warm I need to change it. I guess you guys convinced me to at least treat the tractor better. How can I move Unisaws around if my tractor dies? I need to treat the tractor better.

Back to your regularly schedule off topic smoke detector discussion.

Did anyone have an answer to what is the threshold battery voltage where you should change a smoke detector battery?

Yes the test button does not discharge the circuit internally. The chirp is a warning that there is NO power to the unit. I was told that it can last anywhere from 3-5 days. And as a previous poster stated it is a threshold that when it drops below it.

My wife likes to burn cookies every so often to check ours.

Allen

It's a difficult question to answer. Typical alkaline batteries maintain a fairly constant voltage until they fail. You can see various discharge charts at:

dodging blocks of wood thrown. That explains why I have had batteries fail at less than a year while others have lasted for years. There appears to be a huge difference in performance.

Thnaks for the l>Jim Behn>

Hi again,

It is my understanding that pressing the reset button discharges the capacitor. At least, that is what I was told by the tech support person working for the manufacturer.

Thanks again,

Yes, the test Beep circuit does not have enough voltage to fire but the chirp circuit can still work for a while on the residual charge.

So the service manager wrote corporate and said "Hey, we got a guy that comes in every 3000 miles to change his oil even though we told him 10,000 was good, think we could convince the rest of the customers to burn money like this?" They sent him a bonus check for the great idea. You come in, give him the funny look, he goes in the back and high fives all the other guys...;+}

-jtpr

Thanks,

Today, I purchased a new detector (same model), installed it, and within about two hours, it was chirping.

That seemed to leave only the possibility that the AC to that location was somehow flaky, so I re-wired it.

Still, it chirped.

Then I had another idea...

I called the manufacturer to ask if there were any conditions that could cause a problem in one detector to cause another (sound detector) to chirp.

The answer: "Yes...!"

The suggested solution is to remove all of 'em, reset all of 'em, and then re-install all of 'em.

I'll do that tomorrow.

All the best,

The detector in my shop went off a couple of weeks ago. When I opened the case, a spider ran out.