Ever wake up to smoke alarms going off??? Not Fun!

[Kaos]

OMG! I hate days that start like this. Luckily, I didn't literally wake up, but considering I was on my first cup of coffee, its nearly the same thing for me! Next thing I know the smoke alarms in my house are all going off. Ours are all hardwired so it put me alittle on edge. Ran around checking (although I was pretty confident) that there indeed wasn't a fire. Nope, all clear. So I go to the upstairs hallway one which continues to go off intermittently finally twist it off, thinking it MUST have a battery backup but I can't get the stupid thing unplugged from the hard wiring!

Next plan, throw the breaker, which I was worried about because my office I use is up there, I was praying it wouldn't throw the whole plugs out for the day. After throwing nearly EVERY breaker, I finally find it is in the cellar breaker, DUH!

Times like these I hate my husband working on the road when I have to be a single mom basically! Anyone else have the hardwired type of smoke detectors? My father-in-law will luckily, save me yet again later and come fix whatever the problem is.

Worse part is my daughter slept threw it, and it was majorily loud and right outside her bedroom door! She's just like her Dad I guess, heavy sleeper.

[popowich]

Label the breaker for it in the box when you find it. :)

I live in a ranch and have the attic and living space smoke detectors hardwired together.

-Raymond

[Kaos]

Well, I have all new wiring in my house from when we moved in and possibly the most labeled fuse box. I took a picture, which is dark because I had to through the basement light to stop the beeping, but you can kind of get the picture of atleast one side of my fuse box! I love it in times like these, this one was just oddly placed because I wasn't thinking that the first alarm was in the basement like I should have been!

[Raven]

Our apartment upstairs had one hardwired and I thought it was stupid because if a fired broke out and it put out the electric before the alarms went off we would be toast. Also the way I burn dinner at times it kept sending the smoke alarm off. So I smashed the darn thing so it didn't work and went to batteries. When the batteries start making tweet sounds and my birds start imitating the sound back, then I know it time to change the battery. Plus it annoys me to here that sound.



Anyone else have the hardwired type of smoke detectors?

[Kaos]

^Too funny, having the birds imitating it! That would drive me nuts. I stupidly assumed all this time that ours were hardwired WITH the battery backups which would make sense, but now I have the same fear if it is merely hardwired. May have to upgrade to the ones with the battery included I guess.

[Rebecky]

There was a study about kids not being woken up by smoke detectors. There is another smoke detector that parents record their voices as the alarm, and the children in the study that responded better to that type of "alarm."

Here is a clip of a News story on it. Pretty interesting...

Parents Must Watch

[Kaos]

That's all they need...a recording of me yelling at them LOL! But seriously, very interesting and makes alot of sense.
I think the best thing that came out of this is them hearing the alarm. I have gone over the plan with the kids many times of "what to do" but I have been lazy and never actually performed trial runs of it. Now its on the schedule to get them to actually o threw the whole procedure of "What to do in a fire"

My daughter got embarrassed now that she slept threw it. I made her watch that video with me. I wonder if tey are out yet, those alarms??

[esnagel]

Ours are inter-connected, but battery powered. One in each bedroom, one in the upstairs hallway, one in my office, one in the livingroom, one in the basement. 8 all together. Inter-connected smoke detectors are required when doing practically any inside work that requires a permit in Kenmore (mine were installed when electrical was upgraded).

I think I'm the only one that gets up when they go off - my kids will sleep right through it.

At least they weren't connected to an alarm company!

[Big Dan]

Yous are high class people with smoke detectors and all. When we moved into our current apartment our landlord gave us one and told us to mount it ourselves. :eek: It doesn't really matter as we only have 1 exit and we're on the second floor chances are if a fire breaks out we'll be roasted anyhow. :(

As for your fire alarms a friend of mine has the hardwired ones, when he had problems with them he actually had to take the mount off the wall to 'pull the plug'. His plugs are mounted in the wall behind the bracket.. I guess they don't want anyone unplugging them. :eek: .the plug looks like a PC fan connector on his.

[popowich]

My parents in East Amherst were required to get a smoke detector in *every* room when their furnace was replaced.

-Raymond

[Raven]

Comparison of a Personalized Parent Voice Smoke Alarm With a Conventional Residential Tone Smoke Alarm for Awakening Children

Gary A. Smith, MD, DrPHa, Mark Splaingard, MDb, John R. Hayes, PhDa and Huiyun Xiang, MD, PhD, MPHa
a Center for Injury Research and Policy, Columbus Children's Research Institute
b Sleep Medicine Center, Columbus Children's Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, Columbus, Ohio
BACKGROUND. Conventional residential tone smoke alarms fail to awaken the majority of children during slow wave sleep. With the objective of identifying a more effective smoke alarm for children, we compared a personalized parent voice smoke alarm with a conventional residential tone smoke alarm, both presented at 100 dB, with respect to their ability to awaken children 6- to 12-years-old from stage 4 sleep and prompt their performance of a simulated self-rescue escape procedure.
METHODS. Using a randomized, nonblinded, clinical research design, a volunteer sample of healthy children 6- to 12-years-old was enrolled in the study. Children were trained how to perform a simulated self-rescue escape procedure when they heard a smoke alarm. Each child's mother recorded a voice alarm message, "First name! First name! Wake up! Get out of bed! Leave the room!" For each child, either the voice or tone smoke alarm was randomly selected and triggered during the first cycle of stage 4 sleep, and then the other alarm was triggered during the second cycle of stage 4 sleep. Children's sleep stage was monitored by electroencephalography, electro-oculography, and chin electromyography. The 4 main outcome measures included the number of children who awakened, the number of children who escaped, the time to awakening, and the time to escape.
RESULTS. Twenty-four children were enrolled. The median age was 9 years, and 11 (46%) were boys. One half of the children received the parent voice alarm first, and one half received the tone alarm first; however, the order that the alarm stimuli were presented was not statistically associated with awakening or escaping. Twenty-three (96%) of the 24 subjects awakened to the parent voice alarm compared with 14 (58%) to the tone alarm. One child did not awaken to either stimulus. Nine children awakened to their parent's voice but not to the tone, whereas none awakened to only the tone and not the voice. Twenty (83%) of the subjects in the parent voice alarm group successfully performed the escape procedure within 5 minutes of alarm onset compared with 9 (38%) in the tone alarm group. The median time to awaken was 20 seconds in the voice alarm group compared with 3 minutes in the tone alarm group. The median time to escape was 38 seconds in the voice alarm group compared with the maximum allowed 5 minutes in the tone alarm group. When exposed to the tone alarm, older children were more likely to awaken and were more likely to escape than younger children. There was no association between child's age and awakening or escaping for children exposed to the parent voice alarm. There was no association between child's gender and awakening or escaping for either alarm type.
CONCLUSIONS. To our knowledge, this study is the first to compare the ability of different types of smoke alarms to awaken children while monitoring sleep stage. The personalized parent voice smoke alarm at 100 dB successfully awakened 96% of children 6- to 12-years-old from stage 4 sleep with 83% successfully performing a simulated self-rescue escape procedure, significantly outperforming the 100-dB conventional residential tone smoke alarm. These findings suggest a clear direction for future research, as well as important fundamental changes in smoke alarm design, that address the unique developmental needs of children. The development of a more effective smoke alarm for use in homes and other locations where children sleep provides an opportunity to reduce fire-related morbidity and mortality among children.

Source (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/118/4/1623)


I wonder if tey are out yet, those alarms??