Attic heat detector - hardwired AND 10 yr battery?

[stoveliker]

Question (to the firefighters among us?).

I have two attics. One easily accessible (pull down stairs), one with a tiny access panel inside a closet. I barely get my shoulders through the opening (after taking books and shelves out).

I'm looking into adding heat detectors in my attics. I have power there, so hardwired. But with battery backup (lightning strike, power down, attic fire).

The ones I see are the standard 1 yr battery back up.

However, I know (and have) 10 yr sealed smoke alarms.

--> are there hardwired heat detectors with a 10 yr battery backup?
(Going up there every year is not something I would like to do; the other attic is fine if it's ever month...)


(Also, would one hear an alarm in the attic through an air sealed R57 glass fiber batt insulated layer? Or is it *necessary* to go with the interconnected systems? That would be a bummer because it would mean pulling up even more insulation to make that work.)

 

[Ashful]

A few questions:

1. Why rate of rise alarms, and not smoke?
2. If smoke, they should be replaced every 7 - 10 years anyway.
3. Our hard-wired units are all networked together, such that when one goes off in some remote part of the house, they all go off. I assume wireless equivalents exist today, our system was installed 1990's (and detectors replaced every 7 years, ever since)

 

[Ashful]

Oh, I should add that with a networked system, it's nice to have ones that can be named and report where the fire is. Nothing like waking at 3am to blaring smoke detectors all over the house, and having no idea where on the property the problem may be. We have 7 floors between two buildings, so this can lead to some trudging around in your pajamas, hunting for the problem. In your case, it might mean emptying that closet and hunting for a stepladder, in the middle of the night.

 

[brenndatomu]

My inlaws hate the smoke alarms that are in their 5 YO attic...constantly causing false alarms (which sets them all off!)
They are currently unhooked/disabled

 

[zrock]

If you are going to have hardwired in the attic then they should be networked so the rest of them will go off. You are never going to hear that when you are asleep..

As far as climbing up in the attic once a year id hire a kid for $20 and be done with it..LOL

 

[stoveliker]

@Ashful , @brenndatomu indeed no smoke alarms in the attic, dust can set them off. Hence heat detectors. They alarm at a high temperature or a high rate of rise. They are meant for attics or other dusty places.

I did not know they had wireless ones. Will look into them.

Yes, it's ok to go there every 7-10 yrs (I have 10 yr smoke alarms). But I have not found 10 yr heat detectors. Hardwired ones yes, but they still need a 1 yr backup battery.

 

[stoveliker]

@zrock okay, networked ones it'll have to be.

 

[Ashful]

@Ashful , @brenndatomu indeed no smoke alarms in the attic, dust can set them off. Hence heat detectors. They alarm at a high temperature or a high rate of rise. They are meant for attics or other dusty places.

I did not know they had wireless ones. Will look into them.

Yes, it's ok to go there every 7-10 yrs (I have 10 yr smoke alarms). But I have not found 10 yr heat detectors. Hardwired ones yes, but they still need a 1 yr backup battery.

I have both hardwired and wireless detectors, a mix of heat (rate of rise), smoke, and CO. We probably have about 20 detectors in all (by rough count), due to the disconnected nature of this house. Based on this experience, I'd make the following guesses:

1. If you're going heat only, you'd want rate of rise rather than max temp sensors, in a potentially very hot attic.
2. I wouldn't think there's enough airborne dust in a sealed-off attic, to be any sort of problem for a smoke detector. Heck, there's probably more airborne dust in your house, with people moving about, than in an unused attic. No? What's your attic ventilation?
3. Wireless systems are great, but always prone to the occasional false alarm. In 12 years in this house, we've had one false fire alarm , three false motion alarms, and one false door alarm, all on the wireless system. Not terrible, one false event every 2nd year on average, but the hardwired system has had zero false alarms. It's also possible the false fire alarm was due to the oil-fired boiler "burping" smoke, rather than wireless interference. I wasn't there at the second it went off, but I was there a few minutes after the trigger and didn't detect any smoke.

I haven't actually seen fixed-temperature alarms in years. We had a hardwired system of them in the house I grew up (1950's build), and the garage sensor would occasionally trip an alarm in summer, due to high temps. I thought pretty much all residential heat detectors had switched over to rate-of-rise about 40 years ago!