On smoke alarms
Life 10/13/2004 |For some reason, I was pondering smoke alarms this morning, trying to figure out why they need batteries. Why not just wire them directly into the house electrical current? No more having to put up with obnoxious beeping when the batteries get low, no more worries about a dead smoke alarm causing someone’s death in a house fire because they couldn’t get out in time.
Aah — sounds good, but what if a house fire destroys the electrical wiring and cuts off power to the smoke alarm?
Seems simple enough in this day and age. Don’t get rid of the current battery system — just replace it with a rechargeable backup battery that kicks in in the event of a power outage, and then is recharged from the house current once power is restored.
If I ever have the money to build my own house (hey, I can dream), if a device like this doesn’t exist yet, I may see what it takes to create one, or hack one together.
Random morning ramblings. That’s all.
“Goodnight Lover” by Fluke from the album Risotto (1997, 7:34).
[See also: Batteries | Fire! | More trouble at the Jensonia | Sounds like it’s closed | Had another power outage last night,… ]
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5 Responses to “On smoke alarms”
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Cheryl
Bertamum
Michael Hanscom
Snail_5
Bob
October 13th, 2004 at 8:02 am
They do, in fact, exist, my parents’ home has four hardwired smoke detectors. The thing is, if they burn something in the kitchen and set the damned thing off, there’s no yanking the batteries while you wait for the smoke to dissipate…and the one in the guest bedroom goes off if you shower too long and too much steam escapes the bathroom. It takes forever to shut itself off!
October 13th, 2004 at 9:54 am
Since we just went through this house renovation I can tell you that the current Washington State (which is after the current Federal) housing construction standards call for fire alarms in every room except bathrooms and that they are ALL wired into house electric and they ALL have rechargeable battery backup. We had to pay for retrofitting our entire first floor as well as all the new rooms upstairs. We presently have nine fire dectectors - including two in hallways. Houses will probably next be required to have sprinkler systems as well. Too many people die in house fires to not make this mandatory. Yes, alarm noises from errant smoke are annoying - losing a life is more annoying.
October 13th, 2004 at 10:22 am
Michael — The one in my apt. is hard-wired. I’ve always thought that it would be best to have both battery and house current, with each monitoring the other: the battery would quietly every five minutes if the power was out to indicate that it was working, and power would generate a beep if the battery was low.
Beth — I thought that the steam thing was just mine! It’s right next to the bathroom, and we have to crack the door and turn on the fan to make sure that there’s air flow into the bathroom to prevent false alarms. I’m sorry it’s happening to you, too — but I’m glad that we’re not just some weird one-off.
October 13th, 2004 at 11:40 am
How funny! Not that I’m terribly surprised not to be the first person to think of this, cf course. At least I know they’re out there now. More plans for my eventual dream house.
October 13th, 2004 at 3:30 pm
Older homes and apartments can have the battery types but all new constuction must have the smoke detectors hard wired. This is to prevent silly people from removing the batteries becaues they set it off or because they pulled the old dead battery and forgot to get a new one.
And only stupid construction companys put a smoke alarm anywhere near the kitchen. The kitchen doesn’t get a smoke alarm it gets a fire alarm. Generally a gray plastic dome that could care less about smoke but easily melts in the event of a real fire.
If you have one near the bathroom that goes off from steam you either move the location of the smoke alarm or change it to a fire alarm head unit like the kitchen. You can then put a battery smoke alarm over in the far corner away from the bathroom door. The fire marshall won’t be upset if you have two units in one room. As long as one of them is hard wired.
The real danger in hard wiring is not fire because if the fire is big enough to knock out power you are already in big trouble, but rather earth quakes where the power goes out even before things start falling and gas lines are cracked. That’s when the battery back up comes into play.