Smoke/Fire Alarms

Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2007
Posts
14,107
Location
Leafy Cheshire
I've got a townhouse and in it are 4 alarms, wired. On the ground floor the alarm is in the utility room, next to the garage and shower room. This is handy for informing everyone within 500m when a guest is showering in my home, even with an extractor on.

Upstairs there's one in the kitchen and one right outside the kitchen on the landing. Both of these are great for letting people know when sausages are being lightly fried.

Up upstairs, there's one on the landing. I actually don't mind this guy. He's alright.

Now I don't want to burn to death in my sleep but I'd love to be able to just do day to day tasks without the alarms going off. I set the ground floor one off today when showering downstairs (I've never used that shower but we have decorators in so my usual is out of service). It was 6:30 AM and after 4 minutes of wafting it wouldn't stop so I tore it off the ceiling in fury.

Are there any particular alarms I should look at? I have a nest thermostat, are the nest protects good? I saw it has a warning stage so it could tell me it's detected something and give me a chance to confirm it's bacon before it starts screaming. Is that right? Do others do that? I don't care about the cost really I just want to be safe. In silence.
 

Pho

Pho

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
9,324
Location
Derbyshire
Unless you want smart connected alarms, go with Aico. Practically everyone uses them. I bought mine from superlec as they were the cheapest, but this was a while back so shop around for prices. They're all interconnected over cable rather than their wireless bases.

If your existing alarms are going off you probably have the wrong type - you shouldn't have one in the kitchen anyway, use a heat alarm. Ionisation smoke alarms are better for fast new smoke and are more prone to cooking smoke, whereas optical are less likely to be triggered by cooking smoke and work best with mature smoke.

I went with:
  • EI146RC optical smoke alarm: bottom of hallway and top of hallway above stairs
  • EI144RC heat alarm: kitchen
  • Ei261ENRC carbon monoxide alarm: kitchen (the boiler's in there)
  • Ei1529RC - control panel switch to silence / hush / locate alarms. Because I have a carbon alarm on the circuit this was recommended and if you do set things off whilst cooking it stops the whole house sounding like a war zone
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2004
Posts
4,788
Location
Hertfordshire
I have a couple of Wired Nest Protects - one upstairs and one downstairs.

They integrate with the Nest app and you can view history etc as you can with the thermostat.

Convenient because they do both smoke and carbon monoxide and the detection is very good at not giving 'false positives' - steam etc. You get an alert on the phone if they lose power (or low battery if you have the battery powered version) and a pre-alert and voice warning if something is detected before sounding the main alarm.

I really like the path light feature that senses proximity and lights up the area with a dim (adjustable) glow - really useful for if you get up at night so you don't have to turn the lights on.

Had them about a year now and am very pleased.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
6,961
Location
Stoke on trent
I have 2 battery nest protects and they seem to be great, the best feature i think is that the alarms tell you where the fire is which could be a life saver if your property is big and help you make the correct decisions in an emergency.
 
Soldato
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
8,833
As above I have 4 Nest protects in my house, they don't seem ridiculously sensitive to false alarms, the feature that tells you where the fire is really reassuring, app is good. I'd recommend them.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
26 Feb 2007
Posts
14,107
Location
Leafy Cheshire
Unless you want smart connected alarms, go with Aico. Practically everyone uses them. I bought mine from superlec as they were the cheapest, but this was a while back so shop around for prices. They're all interconnected over cable rather than their wireless bases.

If your existing alarms are going off you probably have the wrong type - you shouldn't have one in the kitchen anyway, use a heat alarm. Ionisation smoke alarms are better for fast new smoke and are more prone to cooking smoke, whereas optical are less likely to be triggered by cooking smoke and work best with mature smoke.

I went with:
  • EI146RC optical smoke alarm: bottom of hallway and top of hallway above stairs
  • EI144RC heat alarm: kitchen
  • Ei261ENRC carbon monoxide alarm: kitchen (the boiler's in there)
  • Ei1529RC - control panel switch to silence / hush / locate alarms. Because I have a carbon alarm on the circuit this was recommended and if you do set things off whilst cooking it stops the whole house sounding like a war zone

Despite how incredibly useful your post was, I think I'm going to go with the nests just because of the integration. The Mrs says she likes the nightlight business and that it tells me where the issue is across 3 floors is handy.

I had no idea about the different types for different environments so I'd totally sticky your post if I could.
 
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