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Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

Does what it says on the tin
Clariman
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Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475678

Postby Clariman » January 24th, 2022, 9:56 am

Our home has 2 wired smoke detectors: one in hallway, one on the landing. New legislation in Scotland means that we need to add a heat alarm in the kitchen and a smoke detector in the living room. All of these need to be linked so if one goes off they all go off.

First question - in general which are better, wired smoke detectors or new wireless long-life battery ones

Secondly, which of the following options would you recommend for our setup?

1. Get an electrician in to extend the current system into kitchen and living room. Will this cause any disruption and redecoration?
2. Get an electrician to decommission the wired smoke detectors and install a new wireless system throughout the house
3. Install a new wireless system throughout the house and leave the existing wired one in place too (no electrician required)

Many thanks
C

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475689

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » January 24th, 2022, 10:40 am

I'd suggest wireless battery operated will be the most cost efficient way.

AiY(D)

Dod101
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475699

Postby Dod101 » January 24th, 2022, 11:19 am

I am about to have the same dilemma and plan simply to discuss it with my electrician. I have three wired smoke detectors at the moment and was planning to extend them. Easy for me as all the wiring is in the loft and my house is single storied.

Dod

monabri
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475707

Postby monabri » January 24th, 2022, 11:47 am

Not suitable (Scottish regs)

https://www.safelincs.co.uk/ultrafire-b ... eat-alarm/


Approved (Scottish regs)

https://www.safelincs.co.uk/scotland-20 ... de-alarms/


I was surprised that the rules are for all homes in Scotland (I live in the West Midlands in England).

monabri
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475708

Postby monabri » January 24th, 2022, 11:48 am

Dod101 wrote:I am about to have the same dilemma and plan simply to discuss it with my electrician. I have three wired smoke detectors at the moment and was planning to extend them. Easy for me as all the wiring is in the loft and my house is single storied.

Dod


for interest?

https://www.safelincs.co.uk/firehawk-w- ... alarm-kit/

Clariman
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475712

Postby Clariman » January 24th, 2022, 11:58 am

monabri wrote:I was surprised that the rules are for all homes in Scotland (I live in the West Midlands in England).

Indeed. It was part of the Scottish Government's actions after Grenfell. It includes all public housing too. I think it was due to come in last February but was delayed because of Covid.

kiloran
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475717

Postby kiloran » January 24th, 2022, 12:10 pm

Clariman wrote:
monabri wrote:I was surprised that the rules are for all homes in Scotland (I live in the West Midlands in England).

Indeed. It was part of the Scottish Government's actions after Grenfell. It includes all public housing too. I think it was due to come in last February but was delayed because of Covid.

Also delayed due to the extremely poor publicity about the new regulations. Cost me over £300 to be compliant (3 smoke, 1 heat, 2 CO and a control unit). Easy enough for me to fit.

--kiloran (smug because I fitted them over 6 months ago instead of my usual leave-to-the-last-minute)

Dod101
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475761

Postby Dod101 » January 24th, 2022, 2:27 pm

monabri wrote:
Dod101 wrote:I am about to have the same dilemma and plan simply to discuss it with my electrician. I have three wired smoke detectors at the moment and was planning to extend them. Easy for me as all the wiring is in the loft and my house is single storied.

Dod


for interest?

https://www.safelincs.co.uk/firehawk-w- ... alarm-kit/


Thanks. Yes I think availability is going to be the problem in the short term at least. I am not sure what I have at the moment. Must check. We have had almost no publicity about this matter but suddenly it is upon us.

Dod

beseeinyou
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475768

Postby beseeinyou » January 24th, 2022, 2:48 pm

I had the same set up here, with the 2 wired detectors in the hall and upper landing, I changed these to 2 wired units from Aico's 3000 range with built in Smartlink wireless, this enables me to add on the additional units required without any wiring, even adding in CO ones so that they are all connected together, the CO ones don't have to be interlinked in this new requirement but it seemed to be sensible while I was doing the rest.

Beseeinyou

csearle
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475821

Postby csearle » January 24th, 2022, 6:37 pm

Clariman wrote:Our home has 2 wired smoke detectors: one in hallway, one on the landing. New legislation in Scotland means that we need to add a heat alarm in the kitchen and a smoke detector in the living room. All of these need to be linked so if one goes off they all go off.

First question - in general which are better, wired smoke detectors or new wireless long-life battery ones

Secondly, which of the following options would you recommend for our setup?

1. Get an electrician in to extend the current system into kitchen and living room. Will this cause any disruption and redecoration?
2. Get an electrician to decommission the wired smoke detectors and install a new wireless system throughout the house
3. Install a new wireless system throughout the house and leave the existing wired one in place too (no electrician required)

Many thanks

1. How much disruption depends entirely upon the the ease with which the electrician can run cables between the existing smokes and the new ones. If you have floorboards above then it makes it easy; anything else and it can be a royal pain. (Might need to get the carpets re-laid perfectly again mind you.) Usually it doesn't involve redecoration because if there are already smokes on the same level then it can all be done in the void between the ceiling and the floor above (as opposed to finding a riser twixt floors somewhere).

2. This is of course possible and will mean no disruption at all. The downside is you have a battery system as opposed to one that never needs battery changes. All a bit amateurish for my liking.

3. Not great, depending upon how you do it either you have duplicate detectors (ceiling acne), or you have two non-interconnected systems, which is pants.

Another option that provides a single mains-powered system is simply to provide mains power to the two new detectors (often much easier and less disruptive than interlinking all the detectors with cables) and have wireless "bases" for the new and (nearest) old detector(s). In this way they are all interlinked and don't have batteries (well apart from any rechargeable backup batteries).

Chris

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475826

Postby Lootman » January 24th, 2022, 6:48 pm

monabri wrote:I was surprised that the rules are for all homes in Scotland (I live in the West Midlands in England).

Me too. As a former landlord I am used to fairly strict fire regulations for property that you rent out. But for an owner-occupier in his own (non-shared, non-highrise) house, it seems like overkill to me.

I had always thought that mains-powered smoke detectors had to also have backup battery power, the theory being that a fire somewhere in the property could take out the mains power before reaching the area in question.

I recall encountering, in a building I had recently purchased, that a mains smoke detector started beeping constantly despite there being no cause. I disconnected it from the mains and removed it, but the beeping continued, because it had a backup battery. I removed the battery and it still kept beeping because it also had a storage capacitor in it.

So three levels of redundancy. I took a hammer to it!

As a standard now I use combined smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. Unless it is an all-electric house, why not?

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#475834

Postby scotview » January 24th, 2022, 7:16 pm

Clariman wrote:3. Install a new wireless system throughout the house and leave the existing wired one in place too (no electrician required)


To comply with new legislation in Scotland I purchased wireless smoke detectors for main living area and hallway. A heat detector for kitchen.

From, Fireguard+, starter bundle £140. Paired up and tested 10 minutes, installed and tested in 30 minutes.

Now that they are proved to work I'll get an additional smoke for the upstairs landing to fully comply. Will re-use 2 existing smoke detectors, though not mandatory. Have seperate BG CO detector at CH boiler which doesn't need to be paired. Later on might get a paired heat detector for garage but not required for legislation.

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476051

Postby genou » January 25th, 2022, 3:11 pm

csearle wrote:
Clariman wrote:2. Get an electrician to decommission the wired smoke detectors and install a new wireless system throughout the house


2. This is of course possible and will mean no disruption at all. The downside is you have a battery system as opposed to one that never needs battery changes. All a bit amateurish for my liking.


Chris


My recollection ( from talking to the sparks installing at MiL ) is that even the wired detectors have a replace by date, which is magically the same 10 years as the wireless versions. You never replace a battery on the new units, you replace the whole unit. With wired units, you have to disconnect/reinstall.

csearle
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476061

Postby csearle » January 25th, 2022, 3:38 pm

genou wrote:
csearle wrote:
Clariman wrote:2. Get an electrician to decommission the wired smoke detectors and install a new wireless system throughout the house


2. This is of course possible and will mean no disruption at all. The downside is you have a battery system as opposed to one that never needs battery changes. All a bit amateurish for my liking.


Chris


My recollection ( from talking to the sparks installing at MiL ) is that even the wired detectors have a replace by date, which is magically the same 10 years as the wireless versions. You never replace a battery on the new units, you replace the whole unit. With wired units, you have to disconnect/reinstall.
My (admittedly limited) experience is that the back-up batteries in mains detectors last about 5 years before they cause an annoying beeping. So you do end up replacing them at some stage. As you say the detectors themselves are 10 years. Exchanging both is dead easy (the backup-batteries use standard 9V-block clips mostly and the detectors can be replaced without un-wiring the bases because the old bases just get re-used.

Funnily enough as a contractor in Germany I used to develop wireless smoke/heat alarm systems. :) I was always on the software side though.

Chris

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476081

Postby quelquod » January 25th, 2022, 4:10 pm

csearle wrote:My (admittedly limited) experience is that the back-up batteries in mains detectors last about 5 years before they cause an annoying beeping. So you do end up replacing them at some stage. As you say the detectors themselves are 10 years. Exchanging both is dead easy (the backup-batteries use standard 9V-block clips mostly and the detectors can be replaced without un-wiring the bases because the old bases just get re-used.


Detectors using sealed long life batteries have been commonly available for several years which last the (normally 10 year) life of the detector cell. At least with them you don’t have the inconvenience of replacing the battery in the middle of the night (*) and returning to bed to find that it was the time-expired cell causing the beeping!

*What is it about these wretched things that hangs fire on a battery warning until 2am?
Last edited by quelquod on January 25th, 2022, 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

csearle
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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476083

Postby csearle » January 25th, 2022, 4:14 pm

quelquod wrote:What is it about these wretched things that hangs fire on a battery warning until 2am?
They hate you. C.

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476090

Postby Watis » January 25th, 2022, 4:24 pm

csearle wrote:
quelquod wrote:What is it about these wretched things that hangs fire on a battery warning until 2am?
They hate you. C.


Or a more scientific explanation may be that, as the performance of batteries deteriorates as the temperature falls, low battery warnings are most likely to occur during an autumnal night-time.

Well, that's been my experience anyway.

Watis

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476099

Postby 9873210 » January 25th, 2022, 4:42 pm

quelquod wrote:*What is it about these wretched things that hangs fire on a battery warning until 2am?


You could replace the batteries on schedule rather than waiting for them to fail. Maybe they have it in for people who don't read the instructions.

The most annoying thing is the intermittent chirp and LED indicating which unit has failed. It's mains powered, there is no need for power savings, flash the green LED at 1 Hz instead of 0.02Hz

Do any of the modern interconnected systems have a feature to help locate the culprit? (since I don't follow my own advice). Something like push a button on any of the detectors and whichever is chirping gives a continuous audible alert for a minute.

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476100

Postby csearle » January 25th, 2022, 4:47 pm

9873210 wrote:Do any of the modern interconnected systems have a feature to help locate the culprit? (since I don't follow my own advice). Something like push a button on any of the detectors and whichever is chirping gives a continuous audible alert for a minute.
I think the alarm that feels it needs to say something flashes red every now and again. (I install Aico mainly so this may well be different for others.) C.

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Re: Household Smoke & Heat Alarms - what would you do?

#476103

Postby genou » January 25th, 2022, 4:56 pm

quelquod wrote:Detectors using sealed long life batteries have been commonly available for several years which last the (normally 10 year) life of the detector cell. At least with them you don’t have the inconvenience of replacing the battery in the middle of the night (*) and returning to bed to find that it was the time-expired cell causing the beeping!

*What is it about these wretched things that hangs fire on a battery warning until 2am?


Ah, the mists may be clearing a little. A newly fitted wireless unit would have been fit and forget. The wired units had a 9V backup in case of mains failure. If you don't want to wait until 2am, diss the circuit and they start wibbling immediately.

We swapped two wired units for wired units-with-wireless as that allowed us to reconnect the two extant zones into one zone ( wiring error during installation - before our time - we suspect; new kit was cheaper than the labour to find the error ). The bonus was that we could at the same time install a wireless master control - test / silence etc, which was not part of the existing setup.


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