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I wish fire alarms did this for half a second before blasting your tympanic membrane with an ear-splitting noise. Residential ones are bad enough, but the ones
by raldi 7y ago
I wish fire alarms did this for half a second before blasting your tympanic membrane with an ear-splitting noise. Residential ones are bad enough, but the ones in offices are the worst.
- tempestn 7y agoThat's a good idea! I bet if someone were to develop a residential smoke detector that did that it would sell well. (Especially if it had other compelling features like a 10-year battery.)
- raldi 7y agoNest Protect sort of does this.
- koolba 7y agoI’d be happy with one that gives battery alerts at less than maximum volume.
- koolba 7y agoIf a fire alarm manufacturer saw how many upvotes the parent to this comment received, particularly considering how deep in the thread it’s buried, they’d most certainly develop one.
- abfan1127 7y agoFYI - The 9V Lithium batteries last that long. https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-LA522SBP-Lithium-Battery-Detectors/dp/B003VKOEBM https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-LA522SBP-Lithium-Battery-De...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tempestn 7y agoGood to know! We bought a few with integrated 10-year batteries from Home Depot a few years back, but I didn't realize you could get regular lithium 9Vs that last that long in a smoke detector now.
- moftz 7y agoYou should replace the smoke detector after 10 years anyway so buying the disposable ones is probably safer.
- NikkiA 7y ago!! even the hard-wired ones are supposed to be replaced after 10 years, and new hard-wired ones will automatically brick themselves after the 10 years is up !!
- tempestn 7y agoFor anyone reading this wondering how that's safe, I believe they make noise regularly once they reach this state, to encourage you to replace them, rather than just silently failing to operate!
- NikkiA 7y agoYep, blip every 30 seconds for 6 weeks, until they go silent. It'll drive you nuts, especially if your handy builder put them in out-of-reach places.
- raldi 7y agoUS fire codes require smoke alarms to be replaced every 7 years.
- wycy 7y agoThat office building alarms are worse is all the more annoying since they theoretically shouldn't need to wake people from sleep.
- misterdoubt 7y agoWell, they do need to overcome my noise-cancelled high-volume drown-out-coworkers music...
- mleonhard 7y agoListening to high-volume music every day can damage your hearing.
- BurningFrog 7y agoListening to my coworkwers can be worse!
- hunter2_ 7y agoWith active noise cancelling, the music can be loud relative to co-workers and alarms but not dangerously loud in absolute terms.
- adrianN 7y agoAt one of my former workplaces we weren't allowed to wear over-ear noise cancelling head phones because of the risk that we didn't hear the fire alarm.
- snvzz 7y agoA couple year ago, I was listening to music at a super low volume (way below that of people talking around me, if I removed the headphones) when fire alarm triggered. I didn't hear it. A coworker did pat my shoulder to let me know, and I noticed the super loud fire alarm as soon as I removed the quiet headphones. The headphones were not noise-cancelling or anything. Just Sennheiser HD380 Pro, which provide ~30dB isolation. I don't think it would have been possible for fire alarm to be noticeable under such conditions unless it was loud to ear-damaging levels. This suggests that alternative indicators than just sound should be in place, such as automatically turning off lights and switching to emergency lighting.
- gwbas1c 7y agoJust sue the alarm manufacturer.