Replacing hard wired smoke detectors

[JulesMaximus]

We've been in our house now for 14 years and the smoke detectors are original and have been dying one by one over the past 6-7 years. We were down to 3 working units... until yesterday.

I did some research and found that the newer smoke detectors don't work with the older ones, they are linked so that when one goes off, they all go off or something like that. Anyway, since they no longer make the old ones I had to replace all of them. Went down to Lowes, they didn't have them in stock, so I went to Home Depot and bought a 5 pack of Kiddie Firex smoke detectors for $54 and 2 Firex smoke/carbon monoxide detectors (these were $50/ea).

Then I went around and replaced all the bases with the bases for the new units. After that I turned the main breaker off and replaced the quick disconnects from the old units with the new ones (because they aren't the same, of course). I also replaced all the wire nuts with new ones.

Took about 30 minutes to do them all and was pretty easy. Probably saved a couple hundred dollars to have an electrician do the work.

Job done.

By the way, my sister and her family had a CO buildup in their home in upstate NY a few years ago. Having a CO detector saved their lives because when it went off they were all starting to suffer from some mild symptoms of CO poisoning and they weren't even aware of it. Without that CO detector they probably would have died in their sleep that night.

 

[spidey07]

Yeah, I really need to do this. House is around 12 years old and one by one they are dying. I hope you saved all the old ones so you can play with radioactive elements!

Was probably going to pay somebody to do it because I think it's tied into the security system.

 

[Number1]

We've been in our house now for 14 years and the smoke detectors are original and have been dying one by one over the past 6-7 years. We were down to 3 working units... until yesterday.

I did some research and found that the newer smoke detectors don't work with the older ones, they are linked so that when one goes off, they all go off or something like that. Anyway, since they no longer make the old ones I had to replace all of them. Went down to Lowes, they didn't have them in stock, so I went to Home Depot and bought a 5 pack of Kiddie Firex smoke detectors for $54 and 2 Firex smoke/carbon monoxide detectors (these were $50/ea).

Then I went around and replaced all the bases with the bases for the new units. After that I turned the main breaker off and replaced the quick disconnects from the old units with the new ones (because they aren't the same, of course). I also replaced all the wire nuts with new ones.

Took about 30 minutes to do them all and was pretty easy. Probably saved a couple hundred dollars to have an electrician do the work.

Job done.

 

[Rubycon]

I hope you saved all the old ones so you can play with radioactive elements!

The source is pretty weak, usually under 1 microcurie of Americium-241. The commercial/industrial duct detectors have much larger sources and these fare far better for home made cloud chambers. Anyone remember thorium doped lantern mantles? Or spark plugs with Polonium? :biggrin:

 

[WackyDan]

Yep.. .Supposed to replace these every ten years. Last ones I bought also have battery backup, where as the old ones didn't.

Pretty cheap price for piece of mind over ten years though eh?>

 

[spidey07]

Yep.. .Supposed to replace these every ten years. Last ones I bought also have battery backup, where as the old ones didn't.

Pretty cheap price for piece of mind over ten years though eh?>

It drove me nuts for weeks troubleshooting the smoke detectors in the house we bought. BEEP! Spend 20 minutes trying to figure out which one it was, replace battery.

BEEP! Fuck! Try locating it again, replace battery thinking i have defeated this infernal noise. Go to bed.

BEEP! FUCK! Repeat. This went on for weeks until I finally read that they go bad around 10 years. So they were all going bad intermittently.

 

[Imp]

For carbon monoxide, the last detector I got said that it was only good for 5-6 years (from the manufacture date?).

Hardwired is nice, it beats changing batteries -- more like it beats the effing things going off to let you know it needs changing.

 

[skyking]

Thanks for reminding me to test them.

 

[JulesMaximus]

For carbon monoxide, the last detector I got said that it was only good for 5-6 years (from the manufacture date?).

Hardwired is nice, it beats changing batteries -- more like it beats the effing things going off to let you know it needs changing.

They still have batteries as backup in case the power goes off.

And yeah, they seem to always die at 2AM and start chirping. :whiste: