We moved into our current house in the fall of 1999. Today it would be 17 years at this house. The old smoke alarms came with the house and others have kindly reminded me that they are long overdue. These alarms are hardwired into the house’s 120V electrical circuits. With no batteries to replace, I thought they would just last forever. I did not know that they have a limited life span of 10 years.
This fall, I did some research on replacement possibilities and settled for the Kidde brand. Costco also had a convenient 3 pack on sale. One of the three alarms also detect carbon monoxide gas, so that’s great, because I can now get rid of my old plugged in carbon monoxide detector as well. They arrived a long time ago, but it was just today that I had some free time to install them.
The installation process was much easier than I thought. With a Robertson screw driver, it only took me about 5 minutes to take the old one out and installed the new one.
When I tested them, I was also pleasantly surprised that when one trips, the remaining two alarms sound off as well. That’s a feature that I didn’t expect to have. Another feature of these new alarms is that they actually voice out in English that either fire or carbon monoxide gas has been detected. That was pretty cool too.
With these types of devices, I firmly believe in keep it simple and stupid (KISS), so Nest smoke alarms are out, more things to break and diagnose. All in all, a pretty productive morning prior to our Christmas Eve dinner.