Speaking of fire alarms --- We live in a house where the fire alarms were not wired to an electrical circuit. The fire alarms were installed in the bedrooms and in the basement but they were independent of one another. To belabor the point if one alarm sounded the others in the house would not. Well, I sort of like the idea of having the units tied together but didn't want to go through the hassle or the expense of placing them on their own hardwired circuit so I hunted around for an alternative. I came across units manufactured by First Alert. These units can be linked together via RF so if one goes off they all do. They are powered by two "AA" batteries which last two or three months. Because the units are controlled by RF they are always "listening" for a distress call from one of its' peers hence the battery drain. We have two in the basement, the bedrooms and the living area. The batteries we use are rechargeable so when a pair runs down the unit "chirps" to warn us ( believe me it is annoying and you WANT to change the batteries ). We change the batteries with a pair of charged rechargeable s and we are good to go. Since we have a half dozen units we always seem to be changing one unit or another every couple of months at which time we always do a test. The tests reassure us and our dog Meika gets a good howl.
PotterFXFDC1 -- Just wondering if you have had any experience with units like these? Are they safe / effective? There have been times ( cooking / excess smoke from the woodstove ) that the units have sounded but I was wondering if heavy smoke would interfere with the RF.
P.S. Even though we test out units frequently throughout the year with battery changes we ALWAYS test on clock changing weekends. Just to be sure.
