Hacker News Reader

Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

*>So, for me, the override is very much a welcome feature that improves safety. In fact, I think I'll be buying one.

You had an improperly installed fire alarm, so the safety-improving feature for you isn't to properly install a fire alarm, but to simplify the overriding of the alarm so you can continue to ignore an improperly installed alarm?

...

View on HN

I'm saying this in a friendly way: you're being ridiculous. :)

I bet greater than 95% of residential fire alarms are false alarms. Now, perhaps all of those people should call a contractor and get their house rewired. (Even then, false alarms would not be reduced to zero.)

Or, perhaps, the fire alarms should be improved so that people can dismiss false alarms without pulling out the batteries.

If you're getting enough false alarms that removing the battery is a common occurrence, yes, you should get one fire alarm moved probably a couple feet. Which is not saying to get your house rewired in the slightest.

A good use of an override is for when something goes wrong. For instance, when you burn something in the oven and smoke comes through to the living room. You find the source of the problem, you turn off the alarm, and you deal with airing out your house. Something went wrong, you told the smoke alarm to be quiet because you're dealing with it, and you dealt with it.

The problem with your situation is that the smoke alarm is placed in a manner that makes your normal way of life be detectable as something going wrong. That isn't what overriding is meant for.

Moving a smoke alarm in my house would require re-wiring. Their primary power is wired, and they are all interconnected (one triggered detector will sound all the alarms).

I think the point is you probably don't have to move it very far. I doubt most would call it rewiring a home to move the alarm 2-5 feet.

In my apartment complex where I had this issue, it would have have required re-wiring, AND the apartment complex wasn't at all interested in making sure the fire alarm didn't go off if I was making toast...

One little crumb burns and all of the fire alarms in the apartment would go off, not pleasant at all.

Then check your fire codes and report them to the Fire Marshall?

I'm just throwing that out there.

At the easiest level, the "rewiring" is the least of the problems. When you move it, you now have to make a new hole in the ceiling to mount the unit and pass the wires through AND you have now left an old hole in the ceiling that will need to be patched, textured (to match) and painted (to match). However, depending on the direction your ceiling joists run compared to the direction the wires run in the ceiling AND the direction you need to move the unit, you might have to create a new hole in the ceiling big enough to get a drill in there to drill a hole through the ceiling joist to pass the wire into a new area of the ceiling. That is more to patch, texture and paint. While not something very difficult for a skilled tradesman [tradeswoman, tradesperson(?)], it is not something the average person is going to do satisfactorily themselves and would likely want to hire a skilled person to do it. Moving a wired smoke alarm isn't really much easier than moving a wired ceiling light.

Not to mention, in many states of the US, you would have to have that wiring inspected and certified before you could sell the house.

You can buy a battery-only smoke-alarm. That's not ideal, but you wouldn't have to rewire anything.

Depending on code, this may be illegal.

My apartment is small so you'd have to either completely remodel the kitchen or redo the whole apartment. Please step out of your ivory tower.

Remember, there are no stupid users.

This is common behavior. Yes, it's not "ideal" when considered along a single "safety" dimension. But when you're having a dinner party and you have a really annoying beep because you burned the main dish and you're already anxious, etc., it's a hell of a let easier to just disable the alarm.

Nest lets you "hush" the alarm without disabling. /Huge/ improvement.

I'm amazed that everyone is claiming the alarms are installed improperly. Aren't most of you in big cities in small apartments like me? The alarm is going off if anything happens when you live < 800 sq ft.

I live in a smallish apt, maybe 350 ft^2, and my smoke alarms never go off, even when I burn something on the stove...

The fact that you're legitimately burning something and you smoke alarm doesn't go off is more of an indication that your smoke alarm is ineffectual than anything else.

That's not clear at all. The smoke from some toast burning and the smoke from your kitchen being on fire aren't necessarily the same in amount/duration/composition/distribution. Obviously an ideal detector would take such things into account and reject false positives.

I do not know the degree to which this is possible in practice, but certainly it's been true basically every place I've lived that the smoke detectors very rarely reacted to "typical food burning incidents."

I live in a tiny apartment. I have two detectors in my flat. I have another just outside the door. They're all tested twice yearly by contractors (and the fire extinguisher is checked).

I've never set them off by cooking, even with occasional accidents of food burning.

What guarantees are there and how does one locate a fire-alarm installer that offers a perfect installation that is impervious to toast burning or strong ovens? Any evidence that safety is degraded between the ability to wave off an alarm versus the oft-used removal of batteries? As the saying goes, the lesser of two evils -- we're only human.

All of our alarms are connected so when one goes off they ALL go off. We have a particularly sensitive alarm just a few feet from our kitchen. It goes off nearly every time we cook bacon. It has a large button right in the middle that will shut it off for a few minutes. It makes a fairly loud chirp when it has reset itself. The pantry is near so it is not too difficult to grab the broom and push the button with the handle. It would be nice to just wave my hand instead grab the broom. Same functionality... just better implementation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com