Yesterday while cooking I set off the smoke detector, no I did not burn anything. They go off when I cook over a high heat. And yesterday once they started going off they would not stop. I ended up having to disconnect them all (they are hard wired with an interconnect) and I replaced them this morning. Aaaaaaaand let me tell you, I had a sleepless night last night knowing there were no detectors installed.
https://www.southernliving.com/how-often-should-you-replace-smoke-detectors-8774122
Reminds me of this, couldn’t find the OG image unfortunately.
Hate it when people overlay unnecessary text, I guess it’s for the simpletons
There are no gangsters here. You do not know what that word means.
They make ones now with an internal battery that lasts 10 years. No more chirping and swapping 9V batteries.
It sucks ass. I’ve gone through about 5 of them well short of 10 years. I do see that this brand released a new version, but this is the one I had. Absolute garbage. They kept giving false positives, and they have no replaceable batteries so they just become E-waste after you disable them. This is the one I had.
You know those have a 10 year warranty right? Including the specific model you linked.
How many ~$25 items do you fill out a warranty claim for? Mine went into the bin and I got another.
Not many, but I don’t buy a lot of $25 products in this day and age. Sometimes electronics fail early, that’s why there’s a warranty. I also don’t go complaining about something when it would have been replaced by warranty either.
The fact they warrant the devices through their entire expected lifespan instead of only a year is notable.
That’s all they sell at Costco now and I’m worried they won’t last 10 years. They’re kinda pricey too $70 for two.
My hardwired detector was $73 for 1.
I’ve had the same problem with them. I don’t recommend them either.
Even if they do have a warranty, they aren’t reliable enough to be worth doing the warranty claim on, imho.
I’ve gone back to the old battery style and gotten some rechargeable 9 volt.
In fact, smoke alarms with user-replaceable batteries became illegal in Scotland a couple of years ago.
Still waiting to see if the same regulation gets applied across the entire UK, but anecdotally I’ve noticed it’s already much harder to find anything other than 10-year battery or hardwired models in my part of England.
What’s the reason behind that legislation?
Safety. What else?
You can see a news report from when it came into force here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60203081
The guidance is here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/fire-and-smoke-alarms-in-scottish-homes/pages/where-and-what-to-buy/
Which includes this part on batteries:
Replaceable batteries cannot be used because the sensors in the alarm degrade over time and so will not be able to detect heat or smoke. This is why the alarm has a limited lifespan. Sealed, tamper-proof battery units must be used because they are safer than those which allow the user to change the batteries.
There have been several tragedies over the years where alarms failed because their batteries expired, or people have removed them. Any alarm you buy will have information on how long it lasts, which can be up to 10 years.
I was looking at one of those when I was buying new detectors.
Those are the only battery ones legal to sell where I live.
This is why I just go ahead and buy the new ones that come with batteries that last 10 years. You’ll have to replace the whole unit when they die anyway.
This is the strat. They aren’t even any more expensive than a “cheap” smoke detector once you factor in the cost of batteries (not to mention the cost of all the sleepless nights when the infernal thing is beeping because the battery is low)
You’re supposed to test them fairly regularly.
I get that monthly might be a pain, but once or twice a year is probably smart, for safety equipment.
Mine expired and decided to sing me the song of their people at 4am.
That was an exciting night, I’ll tell you that…
They always wait until night.
They always wait until nighttime.
I replace 'em every other fire.
Aaaaaaaand let me tell you, I had a sleepless night last night knowing there were no detectors installed.
This seems really weird. Smoke detectors are important, but the odds of a fire any given night are incredibly low. To me, replacing a detector would be a chore I’d get to within a week, and I definitely wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
Don’t they all do that now? Tell you when they’ve expired?
Maybe, if it is made past a certain date. Mine in the image, from 2005, did not.
Admittedly I did similar. At one point I had a non-working detector and noticed it was long expired when I tried to replace the battery. I realized I had been in my house more than ten years and the detectors had been installed by a previous owner, probably in the early 2000’s. Those did NOT beep when they expired
When I replaced those, the new ones were all configured to beep when expired and they were starting to push the sealed detectors with ten year non-replaceable battery. Sure enough, ten years later they all started beeping that they were expired.
I guess I assumed that it’s been 20 years and most people will have replaced detectors at least once. In my state, there’s a required inspection that all detectors are up to date before a house can be sold
(Which is really annoying because mine are all battery but the current standard is they must interconnect so I’ll need some electrical work if I want to sell my house)
Yes.
Not only that, the current generation of smoke detectors have sealed batteries so you can’t even open them up to change batteries or anything. So once they expire in 10 years they start their incessant “I’m dying” non-stop beeping - that’s when you dispose of the entire smoke detector and buy a new one.
I’ve read that they don’t detect smoke as well after 10 years anyway (e.g. even more false alarms) so it’s probably for the best to get rid of old ones.
If you’re not living in USA-land you’re probably fine to simply change the battery every few years because you’ve got a photoelectric smoke detector.
Ionization based smoke detectors (that require changing because radioactive…) are more unsafe and usually only allowed in special cases in non third world countries like the EU.
Oh and you also can’t just throw them into the trash because you know radioactivity… except in USA-land…
Photoelectric smoke detectors also need to be replaced every ten years or so, and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is well within safe levels as long as you aren’t taking them apart to eat the 241Am. They’re sensitive to different things but the photoelectric ones are probably better suited to modern home fires (but they’re more prone to false-positives from kitchen smoke).
Pointless America Bad and radiation fear-mongering.
idk my locale in statesia you gotta take them to the special dump
YSK that those old detectors will most likely not have the same plugs as the old ones, either. Prepare to figure out what circuit they’re all on and a rewire with new dongles (pigtails? Not sure of the right name). Ah, what a fun weekend. 15 min turned into a couple of hours.
New ones had the same pigtail as the old one (both were Kiddie brand), but I did have one I had to rewire. As far as I can tell, they do not have a dedicated circuit, so I had to shut down the entire house.
Depending on the building code / age of house it may or may not be on an individual circuit.
I think newer homes don’t so there’s one less point of failure that can prevent them for going off in a fire. I could be wrong though.
Mine were Kidde as well. They were installed by my dad maybe 17 years ago when he built the home. I eventually found the breaker after a fun game of yelling “Is the light on?” I laughed when I found out it was on the same breaker as the septic aerator (which I had apparently also attached to a garage circuit overhead for work lights and ceiling outlets for tools due to the wall circuit overloading). Fun fact for the people who may not be familiar with septic aerators - when they lose power they have a box on a separate circuit for the failure alarm (which isn’t very loud but annoying af).
You mean those things that make noise when I don’t want them to?
Yeah, I removed the batteries.
Dying from smoke inhalation in my sleep sounds like one of the easier ways to go.
Ours were just replaced in our rental house. They were last replaced in 2004 and our corpo landlord just doesn’t give a fuck.
I don’t think our dryer vent has been cleaned in a decade. This place is a fire trap.
Found out my dryer vent duct was disconnected on both ends. I wouldn’t be surprised 🤷
I’ve warned them about this and our gutters rotting away the wood on our patio and they told me both were tenant’s responsibility, despite a whole section on their website saying otherwise.
I couldn’t give a fuck less about this house. I close on my first HOME next week!
I’m not betraying a hard worker like that, they’ve shown up for work everyday for 7-10 years and you think I would replace them with some young’n?
Living in a country where smoke detectors basically don’t exist and house fires are extremely rare (rare, not nonexistent, we had a pretty terrible fire in a bar on silvester) I always wonder if we are just stupid for not having them or why there are so many in places like the USA.
I’d say stupid. I live in a country where most houses are brick walls + concrete floors, and smoke detectors are still common + since a few years also mandated by the government.
The government mandate came after it was found that of the dozens of people that died every year from house fires, 95% suffocated in their sleep.
Some numbers for my region: ~7m population, 70% of houses had smoke detection before the mandate, on average 63 died per year from house fires.
Some incorrect approximative math: Lets assume that the amount of dead could have been halved if those 30% houses had 2 smoke detectors per person (lets say 2 cheap ones for 2x20 euros per 10 years): 7m x 0.3 x 2 x 20€ /10 /63 x2 = a cost of 267€ per year per life saved. Imo that’s a no brainer, it’d be stupid to not invest in smoke detection.
We had 0.2 deaths / 100k population but I feel stupid for not having one. You are right, they cost basically nothing for some piece of mind.
Plus new smoke detectors are usually also carbon monoxide detectors. So you get twice the peace of mind, cause carbon monoxide is a silent killer. It has no color, no odor, no warning signs at all. It’s happened where a whole family goes to bed and doesn’t wake up.
That we actually have. Our apartment has ventilation (not sure if that is the right word, it replaces the air continuous with fresh air from the outside) and integrated into that system is a carbon monoxide detector.
What is even crazier in my opinion is that you can get poisened by smoke while sleeping as you usually don’t smell smoke during sleep.
I guess I’ll get some of those 20 buck ones, they just need to spot something burning.
Other countries use less flammable materials in their construction. Wood frame construction is very common in the US due to drastically lower cost of wood vs block. We also had something called balloon frame construction for many years which made it much more likely for fire to travel within the walls. That being said not having detectors isn’t a great idea either since most are combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors
In Mexico/central america they don’t shut the windows with the heater on like we do in the cold north.
True but even gas stoves, clothes driers, water heaters etc can produce lethal levels of carbon monoxide if not properly (or have clogged) venting. And ounce of prevention is better than a 6 foot hole.
I live in Latin America and I don’t even have a heater. My climate control options are “window open” and “window closed.”
that’s my landlord’s problem 😎
Your landlord’s responsibility, your problem
…I’m not taking off these sunglasses. 😎
It’s ok, they can paint over the smoke damage and get a new tenant.
