Last night, one of the smoke detectors started to chirp quietly. Oh, hell, do we have any batteries?
But changing the battery didn't do any good, so my wife looked more closely at the unit. To our surprise, there was a comment that the smoke detector should be changed every ten years. Right next to the manufacture date: 1999. What? Really? Well, heck.... But okay. So, what kind? Because, if you go to Lowes or Home Depot, there's about fifty different kinds. Big, small, round, square, hyperdimensional.... What I want is to get one that'll just fit right into the existing bracket, use the existing plug -- so that I don't have to pay an electrician to come out and rewire them. Uh, good luck with that. Packaging for smoke detectors doesn't, as I recall, allow you to easily compare them, let alone answer if they have the kind of bracket that you have now. That's not their problem.
And then there's the question of what features they ought to have. I'd have said 'well, detecting smoke would be a good start'. Yes, but what else? Heat? Carbon Monoxide? Ionization? Overdrafts on your checking account? Perps in the neighborhood? Should they be the kind that you test with a button, or with a flashlight? What about the battery backup -- how can you be sure that the battery is easy to replace? One of our detectors has to be completely unscrewed; the other two have a slide-out compartment - one of which makes it obvious which way the battery goes in, and one of which does not. And what about lights? Two of them have a red light if they're working; one has a light that's green if it's working, and red if the battery is low. Or if it wants a muffin -- I'm not sure.
Do a web search for "picking a smoke detector". Much opinion. Many comments about smoke detectors are very important. Objective comparisons? Not so many.
" Consumer Reports Latest Tests of Carbon-Monoxide and Smoke Alarms Found That Being Safe Is Far Too Complicated"
Hey, would having a fire be that big a deal?
4 comments:
Having been through this...but not yet replaced any detectors...just keep replacing the batteries...I wonder why we no longer make things that last! (Or show the Chinese or Mexicans how to!)
I suspect it's got something to do with the half-life of the nuclear particle inside the detector .... or it could be just that they all got together and said Yeah, we could stand a sales boost every ten years or so...
So do you have a carbon monoxide detector too?
No, we don't. I think those are useful if you have a furnace, but we don't. And the door into the storage room (which used to be the garage, and which connects to the new garage), has a magnetic seal.
Getting one's not out of the question, though.
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