Smoke Alarms Are Important!Smoke alarms are one of the most important safety devices you can have in your home. They should be installed in the hallways and in the bedrooms. Smoke alarms provide early warning in the event of a fire, and enable emergency action in the event of a fire. They are inexpensive, easy to install, unobtrusive, and require very little maintenance, and no home should be without them.
Detectors come in two common types--the ionization and the photoelectric variety. Ionization smoke alarms feature a harmless radioactive source withing a dual detection chamber. Ionization alarms respond to invisible by-products of combustions. They operate by sensing for a change in the electrical conductivity across the detection chamber. The advantage of the ionization detector is that the smoke can be invisible to the human eye, while remaining very much visible to the ionization detector.
Photoelectric smoke alarms work on an entirely different principle. Photoelectric detectors look for the presence of visible by-products of combustion in the detection chamber. When a sufficient density of visible combustibles fill the detection chamber, the detector sounds an alarm condition.
Home smoke alarms should be interconnected. This means that an alarm in one smoke detector will cause all others in the home to go into alarm. Typicallys the alarms are connected by a pair of wires to transfer an alarm signal from one detector to all the others in the chain.
Any smoke detector you install should have a test button. When the button is depressed, the the audible alarm sounds the warning signal. If you have a hearing impaired person in your house, consider the installation of a hearing impaired smoke detector. These are special units that feature a powerful strobe light to alert the hearing impaired in the event of a fire.
Smoke alarms should be wired directly to the 120VAC electrical circuits. Units that depend on batteries as their sole source of power should be avoided.
They are very good indeed. The common home smoke alarm cost around $10 and will detect smoke in very small concentrations in the home. Smoke emission occurs during the early stages of a fire, so smoke alarms in the ceilings of the home will provide plenty of early warning in the event of a fire.
Smoke alarms connected to fire alarm systems are of an entirely different construction. Reliable Fire Equipment designs, installs, and tests fire alarm systems.
For additional assistance on the smoke detectors, complete our Survey Request Form and one of our professionals will contact you.
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