Are you saying the 10-year batteries are worth it or the low frequency signal is worth it? Some areas require non-hardwired smoke alarms to have sealed 10-year batteries.
Exceptions are sometimes made for wireless-interconnect smoke alarms, which can presumably deliver their low-battery alerts through a single hardwired smoke alarm (or other controller). Wireless-interconnect low frequency smoke alarms might be the optimal way to protect these dwellings, although low battery chirps will probably annoy some people.
As a collector Iâm honestly about to say that 10-year batteries are not worth it because theyâll render the detector completely useless for collectors once their term of duty is up (heh), but Iâd definitely say that the 520 Hz horns would be worth it given like I said not only their increased effectiveness in waking sleeping individuals but also in not blowing out your eardrums, heh.
Yeah â I can see why 10 year sealed battery alarms exist (for smoke alarm giveaway programs and places where the risk of tampering with alarms is high) but I donât see the point of mandating them as the sole option for those who arenât equipped for hardwired alarms (especially since they donât always make it to the 10 year mark), never mind mandating 10 year sealed batteries in all alarms, whether hardwired or battery-only.
Mhm, plus the fact that there are likely other ways of keeping people from pulling out the battery, such as moving on from the old-as-the-hills chirp & using something a lot less annoying & a lot more effective instead (such as the detector verbally telling the homeowner to change the battery).
I think the issue is that if the battery is depleted while a family is away (e.g. on vacation), then they wonât know that it is depleted when they return because the last portion of the battery will have been consumed by that point, meaning they never heard the chirps.
Do any jurisdictions actually do this? I donât think Iâve seen one.
As I mentioned above, this is risky with battery-only smoke alarms since a smoke alarm with a completely empty battery wonât be able to give any form of trouble signal, whereas an AC-powered smoke alarm can still use AC power for the trouble signal, and a 10-year battery smoke alarm can give a standard end-of-life warning after 10 years that can run for longer than a normal low-battery chirp.
I donât know either myself but it seems like the manufacturers are starting to do so themselves.
Yes, but hopefully not if said new approach gets the homeowner to change the battery before that happens. I did make sure to clarify that I hate 10-year battery alarms as a collector: I get the reason theyâre becoming more of a thing from an actual life safety standpoint.
I think thatâs just for convenience because people are tired of needing to change batteries.
Itâs not reliable if the homeowner doesnât live on the property full time, or if the homeowner is unlucky enough to be on vacation when it happens.
NFPA does not explicitly require battery-operated smoke alarms to have sealed 10-year batteries, but in day care and lodging/rooming, they do require there to be an AHJ-approved program to ensure the batteries are properly replaced if the smoke alarms are battery-operated.