30 ms·
Have you tried pushing the "test" button while it's going off? On mine it's "test/silence" and works exactly as you describe. This is a very common feature and
by eli 13y ago
Have you tried pushing the "test" button while it's going off? On mine it's "test/silence" and works exactly as you describe. This is a very common feature and in some places is actually required by building code.
It's unsafe to encourage people to pull the battery during a false alarm.
- JeffL 13y agoThe ones I've had, even when you hit the "hush" button, it still makes a loud chirp every 60 seconds to let you know that it's hushed, but still detects smoke. This chirp scares the crap out of my dog.
- eli 13y agoFair enough. Offtopic, but I used to rent a room in a huge old row house here in DC with a fancy "networked" fire alarm system. When one goes off, they all go off. You could turn it off by holding a button on the alarm... but it had to be the alarm that went off first. Makes sense from a design standpoint, but as far as I know there was no immediate way to determine which alarm that was, so there was a lot of running around with a broomstick (tall ceilings) pushing buttons.
- ilyanep 13y agoIn the college dorm I lived in, there was one networked system for the entire building (which was four ~80-bed dorms). It was so ridiculous that most people just stopped leaving when a fire alarm went off (the buildings are made of concrete and other not really flammable materials because it's Southern California) but the administration claimed they couldn't turn down the sensitivity.
- giardini 13y agoMost of these also have dual battery/120v power. So there are usually 3 wires coming into the alarm: two (black + white) for 120v power and the third (red) for 9v signal. The usual way around this feature/problem is to disable (disconnect) the signal line at each alarm.
- ctdonath 13y agoMore than once my dog has tried crawling thru the bathroom wall to escape the noise. False alarms got bad enough when I was learning to cook a steak right that just the sight of the cast-iron frying pan would send him into hiding. Yes, majority of fire deaths involve a non-working detector. Considering how severely & irrationally people react to false positives, anything that calms people into not permanently disabling the device is good.
- umsm 13y agoThe beauty of the nest device is that it doesn't need a button. All you need to do is wave. A button requires you grab a chair or broom to activate... and that can be dangerous. Additionally, those test buttons work for 2 mins before it starts sounding again.
- beambot 13y agoWhat if I start running around waving... because there's a bloody fire!? (That's a really bad false positive!)
- ajanuary 13y agoIf there's a fire to the extent you're continually waving within 8 feet of the sensor then chances are it's one of the alarm types you can't silence [1] [1] http://support.nest.com/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-silence http://support.nest.com/article/What-types-of-alarms-can-I-s...
- jcater 13y agoThen you probably already know your house is on fire?
- xenophanes 13y agoBut someone else might not know and need the alarm to keep going off.