How To Install Smoke Detectors And Smoke Alarms In Your Home
Hi everyone and welcome to today’s electrician edition of your Edmonton electrician where we bring customer service back to the trades. In today’s edition of your Edmonton electrician. We’re going to be talking about smoke alarms and smoke detectors. As always here at Hauer power electrical. We are concerned with your questions and if you have any questions, send them to info@hauerpower.ca.
If you have any other concerns at all, give us a call at (780) 935-0622. So as our goal, uh, as a professional electrical electrical contractor here in Edmonton, uh, we want to educate all of you about what you need to have in your home or business and a smoke alarm. Smoke detectors is one of those things. So we’re going to talk about what’s the difference between the two most common smoke detectors and smoke alarms. Uh, photoelectric smoke alarms and ionization smoke alarms. Uh, do you want battery?
Do you want hardwired? What does it mean for your smoke alarm to be interconnected? And why does your smoke alarm chirp? Why does it beep randomly for you? How hard is it to install a smoke alarm, smoke detector, and why should you hire a pro? Why should you hire Howard power electrical services to install your smoke detector when it’s so easy to do? Uh, how long has your smoke detector good for? Is it good for seven years, 10 years? We’ll get into that.
How often should you replace your batteries on your smoke detector? That’s different too. There’s different types of batteries. There’s nine volt, AAA, AA, lithium ion. They all have different battery types depending on your make model, brand, manufacturer, et cetera. We’re going to get into that too. Um, when you want to paint your smoke detector, when you don’t like the look of your smoke detector, uh, we’ll get into why you shouldn’t paint them, how you can paint them.
Um, and what we advise when your smoke detector has lights on it and buttons, uh, what do those buttons mean? What do those lights do? And, and furthermore, with that, what features can your smoke detector have? We’ll go for that. Uh, as always here at Howard car electrical, uh, we’re happy to give you customer service and provide you the quality electrical that you need. So let’s get into it. I have here a first alert.
This is your standard battery operated smoke and carbon monoxide heat detector, smoke detector, whatever you want to call it. It’s got two and one protection. Uh, smoke fire and carbon monoxide alarm. This one’s a photo electric. It’s not an ionization one. Uh, photo electric simply means that they operate off the principle of light. So refraction and reflection within the smoke detector. When smoke enters the smoke alarm, if it will refract and reflect that light, it’ll signal a smoke alarm, the smoke detector to be triggered, then you’re, you know, to get out of your home or extinguish the fire depending on the size and contact the authorities if you need to.
Um, again, this one’s photo electric. It’s not the combo camo. We’ll utilize photo electric, ad ionization smoke detectors, and utilize both of those to help prevent your nuisance trigger alarms. With ionization smoke detectors, they operate off of the principle of a two plates that are electrically charged and they have a small amount of radioactive material, not enough that you have to worry about when it’s regulated.
But between the two plates that are electrically charged, when smoke enters that, it’s going to interrupt the current trigger, the alarm. And that’s what’s gonna send your whole house alarm system if it’s properly installed by an electrician into alarm. If you have a combo like this with the carbon monoxide right here, not for you here with the carbon monoxide detector, that’s a bonus. You can get separate detectors that’ll detect carbon monoxide, which is odorless. Scentless. Uh, same thing, colorless.
You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. Uh, you can’t hear it. You won’t know that it’s there. But that guy, it’ll know that it’s there. It’ll detect the carbon monoxide chemical properties and it’ll let you know that it’s in your home. Some advanced smoke detectors, uh, will tell you certain values, certain alarm values, uh, a measurement parts per million parts per billion, et cetera, depending.
And it’ll tell you for future reference so that you know how much carbon monoxide is there. And if you have to address a bigger issue, maybe your furnace isn’t igniting enough of your exhaust fume and it’s pushing carbon monoxide into your home and that case will need a new electric furnace or gas furnace. But a little detector like this, maybe you run your 50 bucks at your local hardware store, um, as your quality electrical contractor, we can get these for a lot cheaper for you.
Um, and we can install them for our flat rate. Ask us about our flat rate pricing. These bad boys here are battery operated, so you can’t interconnect these throughout your home. If you want interconnected smoke alarms, you’ll have to call us for a free estimate. We’ll come to your house, we’ll look at your system. We’ll look at the accessibility of your walls, every ceilings of your attic, and we’ll run interconnected smoke alarms for you. Interconnected smoke alarms mean that you’re going to have a third wire that connects each smoke alarm.
So if you have a fire on the top level of your home or in the basement level of your home, they’ll all signal and trigger to get your occupants out safely or extinguish the fire if it’s extinguishable. Um, regardless, always notify your authorities if there is a smoke or fire issue in your home.
Cause you got to nip that in the bud. Uh, we don’t want to come back to your home, uh, when, when you’ve had a fire. That’s, that’s the last, last thing we want to do. Um, going back to battery power, like we said, uh, you can have nine volt batteries, AAA batteries, AA batteries.
You want your battery in your smoke detector to be a backup battery. You don’t want it to operate solely on battery power. You should be having a circuit coming from your panel and it should be on with other lights or plugs so that you know that a circuit’s off when your smoke detector has power or not that that way it’ll tell you, it’ll say, Hey, your smoke detector is out of power. Um, because you’ll have a, a circuit. Maybe it’s your bathroom. Maybe it’s your bedroom lights, something like this.
Uh, call us about that and we’ll be happy to fill you in on what you need and, and what the local codes are. If you’re ever concerned about what your local codes are or how to do something properly, uh, contact your local quality Edmonton electrical contractor and they’ll be happy to fill you in with what you need and uh, where you can go with that replacement of your batteries. Batteries are good just so long as, as the quality of the battery itself.
So some batteries are good for 10 years in a smoke detector. Some batteries are good for six months in a smoke detector. If you buy them from, if you buy your batteries from a local hardware store or generally the better quality if you buy them from maybe a dollar store, they might not be as good a quality. Um, depending on make manufacturer and brand of your battery that will determine the length of life expectancy for your battery.
For your smoke detector, you should always test it monthly, have a look, push the button and it’ll beep and all the other smoke alarms in your home should also beep should the quality, uh, should they be interconnected for a quality installation, if they’re not interconnected and you want them interconnected to, to comply with local codes, didn’t give us a call. We’re always open for emergency services and Monday to Friday we’re happy to help you with whatever you need regarding painting of your smoke detector.
We at Hauer power electrical, never advise you. Do you paint? Your smoke detector is an enclosed unit and if you paint it, you may be compromising its integrity and voiding your warranty. If you were to tell an insurance company in the case of your home burning down that you painted your smoke detectors, they likely would not want to cover you because you have gone to a device that was designed for one purpose and you modified it, you altered it.
It’s got to detect the smoke. And if you’re plugging any sort of intake for smoke, then you’re, you’re just getting rid of your smoke detector and you, you might as well throw it in the garbage. Some models you can remove the detector cover and paint it separately, but regardless, just buy one that’s white and if it gets discolored, it’s probably time for a change.
Get a new smoke detector before you paint it. If you want your smoke detectors to be black, there’s manufacturers that make black smoke detectors. Don’t paint it. Just get the right product. When you have lights on your smoke detector, they’re tar, they’re you something. Whether it’s a constant, steady green light, depending on the make model brand manufacturer, that constant steady green light on your smoke detector is going to tell you that it’s running properly. In most cases, it’s running properly.
Contact us at Hauer power electrical services. If you are concerned with maybe the lights on your smoke detector, if it has a flashing light, that could be a sign that your battery life is low or that there’s an issue with the interconnection of your smoke alarms from all levels of your home. If the battery is low, replace it immediately. If there is an interconnection issue that might be a bigger system, uh, give us a call as your quality electrical contractor. We’re always happy to help you out with fire prevention in your home.
When you have buttons on your smoke detector, on your smoke alarm, if you have a button that’s usually just to test it. Uh, some have a silence button, some have a test and silence button, some have more features. Uh, for example, there’s a nest smoke detector. Now, the nest smoke detector, nest, smoke alarm, whatever you want to call it, it’s the best thing you can buy right now.
It’s on the market and it’s, uh, a little pricey, but you get what you deserve. It’s, it’s built for the task and it has the least nuisance tripping because it utilizes a split spectrum like technology as well as a blue light filter. Um, in addition to the photo, electric and ionization properties that most smoke alarms have, you know, when you, when you buy this nest, it also has the great things that other nest products have, which is the wifi compatibility. So it’ll utilize your home’s wifi connectivity and connect to your home network so that you can get alerts rates, your mobile device, uh, and it’ll tell you exactly what’s going on.
If there’s a smoke alarm, it’ll tell you if there’s a carbon monoxide alarm. It’ll tell you if you are away from your house and maybe you have dogs in your home and you’re worried about them, you can, you can silence it right from there if you know that it’s a nuisance.
If you have home security with also the nest cameras, we’ll have a video on that coming soon. But the point is, is with your wifi connectivity, you always know what’s going on in your home. That’s why the nest product is the one that we always recommend him. It’s the best. It has carbon monoxide detection, fire detection, smoke detection. It’s got all the bells and whistles that you want and you need, uh, maybe at a large upfront cost. But for the cost of a mortgage or how long your rental lease is, it might be worth it for you.
Look into it, give us a call. We’re always happy to give free estimates. We’ll come to your home, check out your system and have a look around. If, if you may be a candidate for it, it might work for you then that’s great. If not, then that’s great too.
But the nest also comes with battery powered devices as well as the hardware devices. So they created a fantastic product that is great to integrate into any home system, uh, regarding the life expectancy. Uh, life expectancy of your smoke alarm. Smoke detector depends entirely on the brand make and manufacturer and Canadian electrical code. They recommend changing it every 10 years. However, some brands require changing every seven years.
This model for example, it comes at two Duracell batteries and it says to change it every seven years, sends it right on the back. You can read through it here and it says replacement date 84 months or seven years after the installation. That refers to the battery life cause that’s how long this is good for. The smoke detector itself may be good for 10 years. You want to consult the manufacturer on that. But if it says replace after seven years and we want to take that off in seven years, throw it, dispose of it however your local codes acquire and get yourself a new smoke alarm or smoke detector.
This one comes with a mute button, so when you have a fire or a smoke alarm in your home, maybe it’s humidity from the shower. Maybe it’s burnt food from your kitchen. Maybe it’s a extra steam from some other source in your home and it goes off and you can tell that there’s no fire, there’s no smoke. You want to hit that silence button right there.
You don’t want to take this off the wall, put it in the corner, because then in the event of a real fire or smoke, you could have disaster. You could have chaos. You want to just hit the silence, clear the issue, and leave this right on your wall. If you move it to fresh air, that’s fine, but you better make sure that you put it right back. Otherwise you’re just negating the effects of having this smoke alarm in your home.
As always at Hauer Power Electrical. Well, we’re happy to provide you that quality, uh, experience. We go for customer service, we go for quality. Uh, we may not be your cheapest, but we’re not your most expensive contractor. So give us a call today, (780) 935-0622 or email us if that’s better for you info@hauerpower.ca as your quality Edmonton electrician. Uh, we’re always happy to provide you with professional electrical service. Take care guys.