Current Events > Wireless vs hardwired smoke alarms. Does anybody actually use wireless?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just curious why wireless exists and what are the pros and cons of them vs hardwired to AC power? In fact why don't all new homes just use wireless to save money on labor for wiring as it appears wireless is just as good in many cases especially with built in batteries that are non replaceable.

In fact why do we even have hardwired smoke alarms as to me battery ones are more reliable due to not being connected to anything that would short them out (we have power blips a lot though never long outages) and both kinds beep when you test it and both require a battery anyways you have to change so why not just have '10 year battery' type alarms in all homes and be done with it?

Saves a bunch of money on wiring when building the home and home owners will be able to understand it better. In fact why don't homes usually have the manuals to smoke alarms you buy?

I forgot to mention Wireless are also smarter then 'dumb' detectors able to pinpoint which room the troubled alarm occurred in and you can tell it to do battery checks to know where it's battery level is at live.

Ofc

At work, I order wireless smoke detectors by the hundreds. Im trying to help you with the ratio.

Why wireless:
For homes that are already built without wiring, or for when you want to add detectors in places that are not wired, AND you want a connected system.

Why wired:
So you don't have to worry about changing batteries and it can also be wired to a central alarm system.

Why NOT battery:
10yr battery never lasts 10 years.

I didn't even really realize there were wired ones. Like when I stop and think about it it should be obvious but I'm far more familiar with the wireless kind

kirbymuncher posted...

I didn't even really realize there were wired ones. Like when I stop and think about it it should be obvious but I'm far more familiar with the wireless kind

I've never seen the wireless kind. And in stores they either sell battey or wired with battery backup:

. I don't see any advantage over a wired one in fact I see more disadvantages if you live in an area where you get frequent power dips it can mess the wiring system up where as battery one doesn't rely on AC power at all and battery's while may not last 10 years are pretty damn good these days. Frequent low battery alarms are almost a thing of the past even for sole battery ones if you don't use the cheapest brand.

I believe it effed some of our smoke alarms up and we had to replace them ironically some never touched their batteries at all and we have had some long power outages a few times.

We had them for 8 years and they never once sounded a low battery chirp but they did have an EOL chirp after 8 years which beeped four times per minute on two of them on different nights so we just replaced them all. We reset them and they chirped 2 nights later again the same ones same pattern same time at 11:30pm just before we got to bed.

We dust them each Spring and Fall and keep them clean so they rarely ever gave us any problems. Usually only once a year (at most) they'd give us a false alarm and they'd shut themselves off before we can do anything and that would be that. Won't hear from them for a long time again and they had been pretty reliable.

We were going to replace them the next year anyways planning for it since we had to do important things for the house like a new roof which we saved most of the money for one: We recently discovered did some violations on the roo to begin with now we have a proper one. We could sue the company that built our manfactured hhome if we wanted but it's not worth 5 years in court so we just paid for the new roof anyways and that's that.

I'd love to see a comeback of battery alarms WITH the cheap brands being disbanded. They should have at least mid range ones then people wouldn't frequently disable them as they'd last quite a long time before chirping. Most of us don't replace them twice a year but we do keep them bug and spider free the best we can which eliminates the majority of nuisance alarms and your good to go for a very long time.

IdiotMachine posted...

Why wireless:
For homes that are already built without wiring, or for when you want to add detectors in places that are not wired, AND you want a connected system.

Why wired:
So you don't have to worry about changing batteries and it can also be wired to a central alarm system.

Why NOT battery:
10yr battery never lasts 10 years.

So how much of your town or city probably has wireless kind? Would older homes in your city probably have the wireless kind like those old neighborhoods with the beautiful homes?