Fastlec

Siting of Smoke Alarms

After the type of detector selection, the most important consideration becomes siting which should be carefully considered at the planning stage.
Incorrectly sited alarms can lead to nuisance alarms which are inconvenient at best and deadly at worst – clearly not desirable.
Such a situation can result in either the householder disabling the alarm, so it won’t operate at all, or continue reading…

Selecting a Smoke Alarm

When fire breaks out in your home a smoke alarm provides valuable extra minutes allowing escape and saving lives.

Types of smoke alarms available:

• Ionisation:-The cheapest to purchase they work by detecting the small particles of smoke produced by flaming fires such as chip pans.  They detect this type of fire very quickly, before any smoke gets too thick.  When faced with a slow burning or smouldering fire, which will give off larger quantities of smoke before bursting into flame, these units can take marginally longer to activate and can be prone to false alarms when cooking.

• Optical:- A slightly more expensive option but this type of alarm can detect larger particles of smoke which would be produced by such things as a smouldering foam filled sofa, or overheated electrical cable.  continue reading…

If you find after a few years that your smoke detector has a nuisance beep, even after you have changed your back-up battery, carefully run the soft brush or narrow tool on the vacuum cleaner around the grilles on the side and front of the detector and you will find the beeping stops. The reason is that the build of dust and cobwebs inside the body seems to irritate the sensor.

Most smoke detectors are supplied with a dust cover which is to protect the unit during construction, so make sure its left on until the room is ready for use.

Other possible reasons for nuisance beeping on smoke detectors:

• Weak Battery
• Battery pull tab not removed
• Battery drawer not closed properly
• Battery not making full connection with terminals

If you’ve removed the power and taken the battery out and the detector is still beeping, then the capacitors still have charge stored in them. They can usually be drained by pressing and holding the testing button until the noise stops.