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.
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.
I replace 'em every other fire.
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).
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.
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.”
If you live in a state that observes time changes you should get in the habit of checking them on that day. It means you check them twice a year and you’ll be mindful of the expiration date.
The instructions in the box (who reads those right?) says to test monthly.
Okay do that.
When done replacing your smoke detector, be sure to give me the spent one.
Mmm, yummy americium.
Genuine question, how do you dispose of these properly?
We have limited electronic recycling options that I’ve found. When I brought my old detectors in, they sent me away. I suppose I could break down the plastic vs the circuit components and recycle the plastic.
What do you all do?
I put things like this in a box labelled “I don’t know how to recycle this”, then I put that box in the corner of the least-used room in the house, where I won’t see it often.
Exactly, that is a “next of kin” kinda problem
Along with many empty medication bottles.
You keep it until the next hazardous waste collection day, then put it in your car to bring there. Spend half an hour waiting in a big line of cars, get up to where they take it and get yelled at for wasting their time on such a small amount of hazardous waste
What do I do? Landfill. Nobody near me wants the ABS housing even if I pried out the electronics and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is too low to need hazardous waste disposal. There are so many more impactful things to care about than recycling two or three smoke detectors every ten years.
Your city should have a solid / chemical waste collection point.
See if you have a local household hazardous waste recycling program. If not, check with the fire department if they’ll take em
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And if you live in a place with a lot of industry or traffic it should be replaced sooner than that.
