Spec me a small wired smoke alarm

Marakith

Marakith

Marakith

Associate
Joined
22 Nov 2004
Posts
432
Location
London
Hello

I'm doing a loft conversion and nearing the end of a bit of a horror story with them.

Anyway - I have to have wired smoke detectors/ alarms installed throughout the house for building regs.

All the wired alarms I've seen are big and ugly. Does anyone know of a decent, small discrete brand that would take a wire?

Thanks!
 
Just put Aico in, smoke detectors are supposed to be functional, not pretty!

The Kidde firex ones are alright, but they yellow something chronic after a few years..... perhaps you can"retro-brite" them :p
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
What do you define as big and ugly?
Click to expand...
Pretty much any of the smoke detectors I've seen when shopping around. Huge and minging. There's a brand called Cavius that's small and discrete, but these aren't mains powered. Although they do make a larger mains powered one.
 
Personally I would just put in a brand that you know will be around in a decade so you can get a direct replacement. As the above poster suggested, put in an Aico, there what 15-20cm across, hardly massive.

When it expires in 10 years you can just slide the old one off its mount and slide in a new replacement, job jobbed in 30 seconds.
 
to be honest after a while i dont think
you even notice them
at least i dont notice mine any more
guess its like when you live near a road
or railway or airport kind of thing
your brain blanks it out
 
If its your own place to live you can get away with the ones that are backed up with the standard 9v battery that needs changing every few years (grade D2). Ei14x series. For rented out properties it needs to have the built in 10 year lithium battery (Grade D1), so the Ei16x series, but to be honest, there is a push towards the later these days anyway. They use a common base, so they are "hot swappable" as it were. Theres also a new series 3000, so things seem to have moved on even more, think these might be ones with extra conectivity features, but I don't know tbh

The D1 and D2 is a new thing in the 2019 standard (Google Image search BS5839 part 6 2019 table 1), before then it was just grade D which was all mains interlinked alarms with battery backup, the type of battery wasn't considered

Two types of smokes, optical and ionisation. ionisation can pick up small amounts of smoke you can't see and can detect fires that dont make a lot of smoke. They are subsecptable to burnt toast and cooking, but more immune to steam and mist etc. Optical pick up clouds of smoke at the top of rooms optically, you wont set them off with small smounts of cooking smoke, but you might with steam or dust. (remove from base if doing sanding, etc)

Generally put opticals in hallways (especially important if near to kictehn doorways), ionisations in bedrooms

https://www.sparksdirect.co.uk/image/data/landing/aico-Avoid-nuisance-alarm-1.jpg
 
Aico also do Multi sensor alarms now, heat/smoke and heat/co2 I believe. The heat/co2 is handy if you have a boiler or gas appliance in the kitchen for instance.

You can radio link them or hardwire link them, you can also have a mix of the two if needed. The radio link requires extra modules be fitted into the head.

The 3000 series does have slight different features, and are supposedly less prone to false alarms, they use the same base as the others but use a new radio link.

You can pull data from them, with info like power loss, head being removed, alarm activations, co2 level etc. Features more geared towards Landlords.
 
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