Along with many empty medication bottles.

that fire chief did you a solid by not including the ignition source in the official report.

if they had, your insurer would have denied any claims had you made any, and your premiums would have increased since your risk assessments would have changed.

glad to hear nobody was hurt and it wasn't a total loss.

How many ~$25 items do you fill out a warranty claim for? Mine went into the bin and I got another.

Admittedly I did similar. At one point I had a non-working detector and noticed it was long expired when I tried to replace the battery. I realized I had been in my house more than ten years and the detectors had been installed by a previous owner, probably in the early 2000’s. Those did NOT beep when they expired

When I replaced those, the new ones were all configured to beep when expired and they were starting to push the sealed detectors with ten year non-replaceable battery. Sure enough, ten years later they all started beeping that they were expired.

I guess I assumed that it’s been 20 years and most people will have replaced detectors at least once. In my state, there’s a required inspection that all detectors are up to date before a house can be sold

(Which is really annoying because mine are all battery but the current standard is they must interconnect so I’ll need some electrical work if I want to sell my house)

I know exactly how they work. I'm a firefighter and a hazmat technician. Plus I work on and repair electronics as a hobby. Your smoke detector failing after 10 or 30 years has zero to do with radioactive decay. It's from contamination (dust) and sensor degradation. Once the metal plates inside get enough buildup from dust (like smoke dust and regular dust) and contamination from humidity, the charge that's supposed to be detected between those plates from the ionization stays lower all the time. That means less actual "smoke" is needed to drop it below the threshold. This happens MUCH faster than radioactive decay reducing what it will ionize.

It's been ~6 years. lol
But it's not a bad idea. I will.

Yes, but no. You really should replace your detectors every decade. They will likely work perfectly for twice that, but is it worth the risk over like $100 in smoke detectors?

So it does sort of force you to replace it after a decade, but you should anyhow.

It's also well worth it, because getting on a chair or ladder and buying new overpriced 9v batteries every year (if you're all proper about changing them) is a pain in the ass compared to once a decade. The more of a pain it is to get to your detectors, the more a 10 year one becomes worth it.

You're supposed to hit your test button once a month to check their functions, but I dont think anyone anywhere actually does that. If they tell me they do I'll just assume they're a liar.

Not many, but I don't buy a lot of $25 products in this day and age. Sometimes electronics fail early, that's why there's a warranty. I also don't go complaining about something when it would have been replaced by warranty either.

The fact they warrant the devices through their entire expected lifespan instead of only a year is notable.

You mean those things that make noise when I don't want them to?

Yeah, I removed the batteries.

Dying from smoke inhalation in my sleep sounds like one of the easier ways to go.

Photoelectric smoke detectors also need to be replaced every ten years or so, and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is well within safe levels as long as you aren't taking them apart to eat the ^241^Am. They're sensitive to different things but the photoelectric ones are probably better suited to modern home fires (but they're more prone to false-positives from kitchen smoke).

Pointless America Bad and radiation fear-mongering.

What do I do? Landfill. Nobody near me wants the ABS housing even if I pried out the electronics and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is too low to need hazardous waste disposal. There are so many more impactful things to care about than recycling two or three smoke detectors every ten years.

Yes.

Not only that, the current generation of smoke detectors have sealed batteries so you can't even open them up to change batteries or anything. So once they expire in 10 years they start their incessant "I'm dying" non-stop beeping - that's when you dispose of the entire smoke detector and buy a new one.

I've read that they don't detect smoke as well after 10 years anyway (e.g. even more false alarms) so it's probably for the best to get rid of old ones.

Reminds me of this, couldn't find the OG image unfortunately.

Hate it when people overlay unnecessary text, I guess it's for the simpletons

Aaaaaaaand let me tell you, I had a sleepless night last night knowing there were no detectors installed.

This seems really weird. Smoke detectors are important, but the odds of a fire any given night are incredibly low. To me, replacing a detector would be a chore I'd get to within a week, and I definitely wouldn't lose sleep over it.

Do you furnish your concrete bunker with concrete furniture? Or is it full of wood and plastic and paint and other flammable materials?

Okay, then how about renaming every element that's named after a nation-state?

idk my locale in statesia you gotta take them to the special dump

There are no gangsters here. You do not know what that word means.

Living in a country where smoke detectors basically don't exist and house fires are extremely rare (rare, not nonexistent, we had a pretty terrible fire in a bar on silvester) I always wonder if we are just stupid for not having them or why there are so many in places like the USA.

Other countries use less flammable materials in their construction. Wood frame construction is very common in the US due to drastically lower cost of wood vs block. We also had something called balloon frame construction for many years which made it much more likely for fire to travel within the walls. That being said not having detectors isn't a great idea either since most are combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors

In Mexico/central america they don't shut the windows with the heater on like we do in the cold north.

…I’m not taking off these sunglasses. 😎

I'd say stupid. I live in a country where most houses are brick walls + concrete floors, and smoke detectors are still common + since a few years also mandated by the government.

The government mandate came after it was found that of the dozens of people that died every year from house fires, 95% suffocated in their sleep.

Some numbers for my region: ~7m population, 70% of houses had smoke detection before the mandate, on average 63 died per year from house fires.

Some incorrect approximative math: Lets assume that the amount of dead could have been halved if those 30% houses had 2 smoke detectors per person (lets say 2 cheap ones for 2x20 euros per 10 years): 7m x 0.3 x 2 x 20€ /10 /63 x2 = a cost of 267€ per year per life saved. Imo that's a no brainer, it'd be stupid to not invest in smoke detection.

We had 0.2 deaths / 100k population but I feel stupid for not having one. You are right, they cost basically nothing for some piece of mind.

Plus new smoke detectors are usually also carbon monoxide detectors. So you get twice the peace of mind, cause carbon monoxide is a silent killer. It has no color, no odor, no warning signs at all. It's happened where a whole family goes to bed and doesn't wake up.

That we actually have. Our apartment has ventilation (not sure if that is the right word, it replaces the air continuous with fresh air from the outside) and integrated into that system is a carbon monoxide detector.

What is even crazier in my opinion is that you can get poisened by smoke while sleeping as you usually don't smell smoke during sleep.

I guess I'll get some of those 20 buck ones, they just need to spot something burning.

YSK that those old detectors will most likely not have the same plugs as the old ones, either. Prepare to figure out what circuit they're all on and a rewire with new dongles (pigtails? Not sure of the right name). Ah, what a fun weekend. 15 min turned into a couple of hours.

This is why I just go ahead and buy the new ones that come with batteries that last 10 years. You'll have to replace the whole unit when they die anyway.

It's more to do with improved battery technology. New detectors have lithium batteries that last the same ten years as the detector.

New ones had the same pigtail as the old one (both were Kiddie brand), but I did have one I had to rewire. As far as I can tell, they do not have a dedicated circuit, so I had to shut down the entire house.

I am an engineer and it's just legitimately hard to build any kind of sensor that lasts and stays accurate longer than like 10 years especially without maintenance. They do intentionally design them so that they don't last longer, but that's because a design that would last longer would costs like 10x as much and require a lot of maintenance and calibration that your average homeowner is simply not going to do. It's honestly surprising you can make an accurate smoke detector that even lasts 10 years as cheap as they are.

Mine were Kidde as well. They were installed by my dad maybe 17 years ago when he built the home. I eventually found the breaker after a fun game of yelling "Is the light on?" I laughed when I found out it was on the same breaker as the septic aerator (which I had apparently also attached to a garage circuit overhead for work lights and ceiling outlets for tools due to the wall circuit overloading). Fun fact for the people who may not be familiar with septic aerators - when they lose power they have a box on a separate circuit for the failure alarm (which isn't very loud but annoying af).

Depending on the building code / age of house it may or may not be on an individual circuit.

I think newer homes don't so there's one less point of failure that can prevent them for going off in a fire. I could be wrong though.

I replace 'em every other fire.

I live in Latin America and I don't even have a heater. My climate control options are "window open" and "window closed."

This is the strat. They aren't even any more expensive than a "cheap" smoke detector once you factor in the cost of batteries (not to mention the cost of all the sleepless nights when the infernal thing is beeping because the battery is low)

True but even gas stoves, clothes driers, water heaters etc can produce lethal levels of carbon monoxide if not properly (or have clogged) venting. And ounce of prevention is better than a 6 foot hole.

This post got me thinking of installing smoke detectors in my home. Nobody I know has one, and it never before crossed my mind I should have one.

Thankfully I did get one installed. Two days ago it went off and saved our butt.

Thanks OP and Lemmy.

Good to hear! About the saving, not the needing it to save you. Hopefully everything is okay.

Thanks! everything is fine because the alert avoided the unattended pan with oil to catch fire. About 6 years ago this happened to a friend and they weren't so lucky.. but could have been much worse. Nobody got hurt, but the entire kitchen had to be renewed. They of course didn't have a smoke detector. As almost nobody has in Spain.