You’re likely using the wrong smoke detectors
With each fire in our area that takes lives, I’ve asked myself,
“Are we missing something?” I am afraid we may have, and it has been hiding behind a smokescreen for over 30 years.
To understand the problem, it is necessary to know that fires are usually either smoldering fires or open flame fires.
Kitchen grease fires and fires started by a stray spark in a wastebasket full of crumpled paper are examples of open flame fires. If you ever lit a piece of paper on fire, you may recall that it gives off almost no smoke. It does give off invisible ions. Smoldering fires are pretty much all the other types of fires in the home, the super smoky toxic fires. Green leaves give off smoky fires as Boy Scouts can attest, but so do burning synthetic cloth, rugs, plastic and rubber items.
Many things in our house will make a very smoky fire that can easily kill while we sleep.
Contrary to what you think, you probably do not have any real smoke detectors in your home. Sure, the thing on your ceiling screams like heck when you overcook bacon, but it is only falsely leading you to believe you have a good warning system in your home.
Probably not. You are likely to have only ion detectors in your home.
Ion detectors are likely to be much worse at detecting smoke than photoelectric detectors. Smoke inhalation is the leading cause of home fire deaths, according to the National Fire Protection Association. You’ve probably never heard a coroner stating someone died of ion inhalation.
In 2008 the National Institute of Standards and Testing ran experiments on the two types and published the data.
The NIST report shows photoelectric detectors alerted sooner for smoldering fires. On average, they sounded the first alarm at 37 minutes after the fire started, 29 minutes sooner than ionic detectors.
For flaming fires the photoelectric alarms went off an average of 94 seconds after the fire began, about 47 seconds slower for kitchen grease or waste paper basket fires.
I know that at 3 in the morning, if my house was on fire, I’d like to have the kind of detector that wakes me up 29 minutes sooner; that would be the photoelectric detectors.
The industry says there are other factors to consider and the data is inconclusive. To completely settle the issue, we should require fire marshals to include not only how many detectors were in the house where there was a fire and are they functioning, but what types of detectors were used.
Homeowners may avoid buying the photoelectric detectors because they are more expensive. Many local building codes don’t specify which type to get.
If there are no photoelectric detectors in your house, there is a very high probability that you don’t have any real smoke detectors in your home at all. Get a ladder and check the type. I am probably right.
The price of these detectors has come down in recent years, I recently purchased some for $11 each.
So consider putting photoelectric detectors in all of your bedrooms, and on every floor of your home, giving you the real protection that you always thought you had. Keep some ionic detectors too. Open flame fires can cause serious damage.
Lastly, test all your detectors monthly. The last time I checked I found one of mine was dead. Maybe I was on vacation when it was beeping its dying warning.