Interlinked Smoke & Heat Alarms

[Ascender]

The house we bought has some wired smoke and heat alarms, but they're playing up so need replaced. The heat alarm in particular is now going off if the heating comes on or we even look at the oven. Have tried cleaning them etc.

Has anyone got recommendations for interlinked alarms, ideally with some sort of smart home integration?

[scotta]

I replaced the smoke alarms with the same models recently - saved any fucking about with wiring.

[KiwiDave]

I only have a note of caution in that we had to replace all of ours recently to pass building inspection after our renovations last year. The ones going out were only a year old and vanilla smoke alarms, but regardless of whether it was part of the building work being done, they won't issue compliance on a renovation without safety systems being up to current code, which specifies linked alarms. We bought a set of 16 alarms which pair by being in proximity to one another from our local hardware store. They work, but introduce the issue that where one goes off, it sets all of them off and then you have no idea where the 'fire' is. We had a few false alarms a few weeks back resulting in evacuating the house and then running round the whole fucking property to check nothing was actually alight.

I would 12,000 times over much prefer either normal ones that don't sync, so you can run to the source of the noise to verify imminent death, or something much smarter where you can see quickly which zone has been triggered.

[Ascender]

That's a good point @KiwiDave for larger properties, I hadn't thought of that.

Even with four alarms here, I'm just guessing at which one is at fault because like you say, they all go off I can't imagine somewhere with 16 of them!?

I remember when the Scottish government mandated linked alarms, all it meant was I had to replace perfectly good smart alarms which were so much more fully-featured.

[Marv]

The fumes from oil based paint (thinned with white spirit) set off the interlinked system in my house. Seemed to do it want early in the morning too

The alarm must have been at least 120db too.

[KiwiDave]

Even with four alarms here, I'm just guessing at which one is at fault because like you say, they all go off I can't imagine somewhere with 16 of them!?

I should point out our place is a decent size, but isn't a palace. The 16 of them is the council building inspector being overly officious, there's two of them in a hallway 4m long for instance "because the plans say so". Glossing over the fact he's referring to drawings from the 90's when the place looked nothing like it does now...

It turned out our 'misfires' were almost certainly spiders from the garage area where I had fitted one to be cautious over the solar battery area. I did read not to put them in high dust areas or where insects could get at them, turns out it was true.

[ShockDiamonds]

For a day or two I was convinced the smoke alarm on our top floor at the house needed a new battery. Replaced it, and that short, sharp high-pitched ‘beep’ was still in evidence.

I then realised it was my office chair (office is 15 ft from the device) squeaking and making the exact same noise, same pitch etc