Looking for bang for buck devices to cover 2 storeys
Anyone Got Good Smoke Alarm Recommendations?
Lputangi on 23/03/2024 - 09:51
Comments
Most of the reviews on Bunnings are average to poor, but i guess it might be reverse survivorship bias.
I'll take a stab at one of them and see how i go!https://www.bunnings.co.nz/search/products?page=1&q=smoke+al…
The big problems are condensation in winter/bugs/dust causing false alarms, and battery life much shorter than the advertised 10 years. I would say most cheap ones (including those from Bunnings/M10) won't last the full 10 years, or even 5 years. It's as if they intentionally mislabel it using 'lab tested' results, in order to hit a particular price point.
The only "10 year" smoke alarms still working in my house are the Cavius ones, installed back in 2018.
Not sure if you need smart or not, but I have 3x aqara zigbee smoke detectors for almost 2 years now and it has been working great. Couple of times it has activated in kitchen due to smoke so it works. Love the remote notifications from home assistant. Active smoke alarm in home when no one is home seems no use to me or fair to say too late to prevent it.
Thanks i'll take a look, i have a home assistant setup already so it could be a good option. Did you use it over zigbee2mqtt?
We have the cavius ones in our home. No complaints, and they're pretty discrete.
Another vote for Cavius. Their support is also great if you have issues (we had false alarm issues).
Just a thought re smoke alarms if you have children:
One study found that 85% of children from six to 17 years old did not wake up during a test with a standard smoke alarm. Another study found that children respond better to different tones and frequencies. A hybrid alarm that combines a low-frequency tone and female voice performed well among children.
Low-frequency sounders have been available for a number of years and can be connected to many models of a smoke alarm.Interesting statistic! I have first hand experience of this being true.
Once our house alarm randomly went off in the middle of the night. Anyone who has had this happen knows how loud it is. Strange thing is we hadn't used the alarm in years and it wasn't armed that night. Wife and I bolted out of bed, hearts racing. Wife ran to the kids room down the hall to comfort them while I jammed in numbers on the keypad in a frantic mess, trying to remember the code. After what seemed like ages I managed to get the code right.
Kids slept right through it.
We kept getting false positives buying the Mitre 10 photoelectric.
We recently switched to these. So far haven't had any false positives. (been about a month)
https://www.fireproducts.co.nz/shop/product/668543/smoke-ala…If you buy the 10yr ones, make sure you keep a copy of the receipt somewhere. Ours kept failing after 3yrs or so, even the good brand ones.
great tip! thanks
Exactly, bought 3 packs 10 years life smoke alarms from Bunnings probably following a post here maybe 4,5 years ago and they all failed after about 3.5 years and started beeping, luckily kept receipt and Bunnings swapped them for a newer model.
Note the receipt (in particular the thermal ink) will probably perish before the smoke alarm does.
Any long life photoelectric smoke alarm will do the job. The battery should last 10 years.
You will need more than one though - particularly in a 2 storey house. Ideally one in each bedroom, hallway, living areas.
You can get them from Bunnings, M10, The Warehouse etc.