Fire Safety

[Intercooler]

    Trying to figure out the new house a little. I should have made the previous owner replace all the smoke detectors before settlement. It beats me why the inspectors don't put it on the list and the new owner demand it  I noticed the yellow color they had on our home inspection when we walked through. At any rate, one of ours acted up last night with an audible in the middle of the night    I pulled it down this morning and they are all dated year 2000. On the back was instructions of what the lights/chirps mean and as it turns out this one was battery related. They are AC/DC which from what I gather 10 years is the max life for them. This evening for the first time the one in the kitchen went off telling us it works  We have 6 upstairs, only 1 on the main level and 1 in the basement. That's still $80 to change them all and we plan on doing it real soon.
    The previous owner also left one extinguisher in the garage holder which shows discharged. It's a Halon unit which I'm pretty sure is only good for grease fires. I don't think it can be recharged and just threw one of my ABC's in the holder for the time being. Should I toss the Halon? 

[The_Shadow]

Some of the better extinguishers are rechargeable and the cheaper are disposable (should be marked as non rechargeable)

Yes the detectors need to be changed out every 10 yrs or sooner, the ionization chamber has a small radioactive source that decays over time.

The main question is "Are the smoke detectors part of your home alarm system?"  Did the alarm trigger your house alarm system generate a call to the monitoring station?  Did they contact you to see if you were at home or having an issue?

The systems these days have all of the detectors tied together, where if one triggers all of them will sound an alarm. 

Some Fire Departments will supply batteries twice a year for the smoke detector programs, usually when you change your clocks for daylight savings time.

What about Carbon monoxide detectors?  You do have propane...so do you have a carbon monoxide detector in areas where you have the gas in use?  Sleeping areas?

[Intercooler]

  We haven't had the alarm installer out yet to look at that system. We know it will need a few things and we wanted to wait until settlement is over on the other house (Oct. 31). Currently we don't have an outside alarm light or audible and they will be on the list of wants. I have the books on the alarms system and need to see what gadgets they installed!

   When we place the order for new detectors I will add a Carbon Monoxide unit as well.

[The_Shadow]

A rate of rise heat detector, can be used as part of the fire detection systems, it measures the rise in heat over time.

[sqlbullet]

A rate of rise heat detector, can be used as part of the fire detection systems, it measures the rise in heat over time.

THe fire/smoke detectors in our remodel have this.  Drives me nuts.  Because my new range (six 35,000 BTU burners  ) generate enough heat fast enough that it will trip the heat/time sensor.  So, we hear "Fire! Fire! Fire!" everytime I cook a burger.

[The_Shadow]

Somewhere in the fire detection circuit there will probably be an EOLR (end of the line resistor) typically a 2.2k OHM, most of the items are parallel wired so at the last device you use the resistor.

An End of Line resistor is used to create a small constant load in a protective zone or loop. The control panel monitors the current in the loop to detect if the wires have been cut open, or shorted, both of which would be either a "trouble" or "alarm" indication.