Smoke/Fire Alarms

[DampCat]

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.

 

[DampCat]

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.

 

[DampCat]

Thanks all