The half life for americium 241 is like 450 years. The 10 year replacement has nothing to do with decay. It's just a non specific safety in case any of the electronics or board etc start to fail. Photoelectric detectors have the same 10 year recommendation as a max.

It's actually recommend by many organizations (like the NFPA) to replace photoelectric detectors more often than ionization detectors, if anything.

This is plain WRONG and DANGEROUS.

The issue is NOT the Americum but the natural degration of the photoelectric cells and the accumulation of dirt within the test chamber.

Even before that time the risk for false alarms is increased substantially by degration before the chances for sucessful alarming decrease rapidly. Due to that they actually withstand aging actually worse than ionisation based devices.

Sientific sources?

Here

here.

Here

Here

(Besides: Americum has a decay time of over 400 years,btw)

This is anecdotical but I moved into an apartment with a 30 year old ionizing smoke detector, and the failure was it was too sensitive, I assume because there were less electrons being emitted from the radioactive element, any faint smoke caused it to go off. Eventually it got into a state where it would always be in an alert state, and was beeping 100% of the time, which was when the landlord finally replaced it.

My assumption with the 10 year replacement recommendation for Americium based smoke detectors is to replace it before it becomes too sensitive and annoying, because they were worried some people would remove the battery and just live without an active smoke detector.

Alec in his own video mentions that the issue isn't that the Americium decays, but that the electronics themselves age and fail, which applies to both the ionization detectors and photoelectric detectors.

This is one of the things you just don't wanna mess with, as such a failure is completely unpredictable, and from what I know some manufacturers are even beginning to make detector units with non-replaceable batteries, intended to be replaced whole when the battery dies after years of runtime, to make it impossible to keep using a detector after its rated lifetime.

I was about to link to the same video. From what I remember though both types have strength and weaknesses in regards to the type of fire.

Edit: watched it again so ionization smoke detectors are better at detecting active fire, although his conclusion is that the benefit is not as big and overall photoelectric ones are better.

According to the one i just had to replace, combo carbon monoxide detectors need to be replaced. I don't know how the carbon monoxide part works, but i wonder if it's a reagent or something.

And if you live for rent, at least over here in Germany your landlords are obliged to replace them regularly, but like you say that just means they'll replace them with previous ones that have been checked and had batteries replaced.

Hehe.

You want to bet your life on that? You want to bet the life of your kids on that?

A motion to rename every element that's named after a place. All in favor updoot, all opposed downdoot

It sucks ass. I've gone through about 5 of them well short of 10 years. I do see that this brand released a new version, but this is the one I had. Absolute garbage. They kept giving false positives, and they have no replaceable batteries so they just become E-waste after you disable them. This is the one I had.

https://www.homedepot.com/pep/Kidde-10-Year-Worry-Free-Battery-Smoke-and-Carbon-Monoxide-Detector-Photoelectric-Sensor-3-Pack-21029899-3-21029899-3/203534175?

In fact, smoke alarms with user-replaceable batteries became illegal in Scotland a couple of years ago.

Still waiting to see if the same regulation gets applied across the entire UK, but anecdotally I’ve noticed it’s already much harder to find anything other than 10-year battery or hardwired models in my part of England.

Those are the only battery ones legal to sell where I live.

I was looking at one of those when I was buying new detectors.

There are no gangsters here. You do not know what that word means.

That's a reasonable reaction to the current state of things.

Better by fire than by ICE.

But are you fine with dying from burning or smoking inhalation?

They always wait until night.

They always wait until nighttime.

Photoelectric smoke detectors also need to be replaced every ten years or so, and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is well within safe levels as long as you aren't taking them apart to eat the ^241^Am. They're sensitive to different things but the photoelectric ones are probably better suited to modern home fires (but they're more prone to false-positives from kitchen smoke).

Pointless America Bad and radiation fear-mongering.

idk my locale in statesia you gotta take them to the special dump

Maybe, if it is made past a certain date. Mine in the image, from 2005, did not.

Yes.

Not only that, the current generation of smoke detectors have sealed batteries so you can't even open them up to change batteries or anything. So once they expire in 10 years they start their incessant "I'm dying" non-stop beeping - that's when you dispose of the entire smoke detector and buy a new one.

I've read that they don't detect smoke as well after 10 years anyway (e.g. even more false alarms) so it's probably for the best to get rid of old ones.

Found out my dryer vent duct was disconnected on both ends. I wouldn't be surprised 🤷

Your landlord's responsibility, your problem

It's ok, they can paint over the smoke damage and get a new tenant.

I work in EMS. When we respond to house fires in the middle of the night there's kind of two different ways they go. When people have smoke detectors and their house catches on fire in the middle of the night they're the ones who call us and we get on scene to find them outside their home in their pajamas, watching their house burn, very shaken up but ok. They never need anything from us ambulance-wise except maybe some blankets. When people don't have smoke detectors in their homes and they catch on fire in the middle of the night a neighbor or passer-by calls the fire in and we get on scene and the firefighters are dragging bodies out to us.

If you are asleep and your house catches fire, the idea is that the smoke detector will wake you up with enough time hopefully to escape the fire. That is really their primary purpose.

Some European countries do require them. Germany and Britain require smoke detectors in all residential buildings, for example.

They are mandatory in Ireland, so please stop the "Europe" stuff.

House fires were a huge cause of death and in apartment blocks they also can let one person's mistake kill hundreds of others.

Detect fires, save lives.

Possibly a difference in construction materials. Most stuff in the US is made of wood and other flammable materials. From what I understand, brick/stone based materials are the most common in European buildings.

In Germany they are mandatory for a while now. And at least my landlord sends a company to check if they still work every year, so I assume that's mandatory too.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347808687_Analysis_of_the_effectiveness_of_the_smoke_alarm_obligation_-_Experiences_from_practice has an overview of the regulations and an analysis of the impact in Germany.

Here in France rentals must have them, I believe. But I've never known anybody whose home caught fire. Maybe it has to do with building materials and regulations? In my région buildings are stone. My house had 90cm-thick granite walls. Radon is a bigger concern than fire.

They prevent death.

I’m asking as an european

Do you literally not have fires there?

Because fire hot!

You're not fooling me! Get out of here ya darn Velociraptor!

The instructions in the box (who reads those right?) says to test monthly.

Other countries use less flammable materials in their construction. Wood frame construction is very common in the US due to drastically lower cost of wood vs block. We also had something called balloon frame construction for many years which made it much more likely for fire to travel within the walls. That being said not having detectors isn't a great idea either since most are combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

I'd say stupid. I live in a country where most houses are brick walls + concrete floors, and smoke detectors are still common + since a few years also mandated by the government.

The government mandate came after it was found that of the dozens of people that died every year from house fires, 95% suffocated in their sleep.

Some numbers for my region: ~7m population, 70% of houses had smoke detection before the mandate, on average 63 died per year from house fires.

Some incorrect approximative math: Lets assume that the amount of dead could have been halved if those 30% houses had 2 smoke detectors per person (lets say 2 cheap ones for 2x20 euros per 10 years): 7m x 0.3 x 2 x 20€ /10 /63 x2 = a cost of 267€ per year per life saved. Imo that's a no brainer, it'd be stupid to not invest in smoke detection.

This is the strat. They aren't even any more expensive than a "cheap" smoke detector once you factor in the cost of batteries (not to mention the cost of all the sleepless nights when the infernal thing is beeping because the battery is low)

The closest detector to the kitchen was in a bed room.

There had been a different detector in the living room but had gotten knocked down a while ago and broke (and never replaced), it was not on the interlink system, and when the other detectors would go off while cooking the one in the living room would not.

As you can see from my image, the detectors I replaced were from 2005, and needed replacing for quite some time.

It's actually because my fume hood does nothing and is a piece of shit just slightly more than I am for not replacing it. At least I switched to avacado oil, higher smoke point.

New ones had the same pigtail as the old one (both were Kiddie brand), but I did have one I had to rewire. As far as I can tell, they do not have a dedicated circuit, so I had to shut down the entire house.

RIP. Please get at least one.

Good to hear! About the saving, not the needing it to save you. Hopefully everything is okay.

I put things like this in a box labelled "I don't know how to recycle this", then I put that box in the corner of the least-used room in the house, where I won't see it often.

You keep it until the next hazardous waste collection day, then put it in your car to bring there. Spend half an hour waiting in a big line of cars, get up to where they take it and get yelled at for wasting their time on such a small amount of hazardous waste

Your city should have a solid / chemical waste collection point.

What do I do? Landfill. Nobody near me wants the ABS housing even if I pried out the electronics and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is too low to need hazardous waste disposal. There are so many more impactful things to care about than recycling two or three smoke detectors every ten years.

See if you have a local household hazardous waste recycling program. If not, check with the fire department if they'll take em

The ones we have installed respond to IR signals from your TV remote. It doesn't matter what button you use on the remote, just point the remote at the smoke alarm and it will turn off

Do you furnish your concrete bunker with concrete furniture? Or is it full of wood and plastic and paint and other flammable materials?

People die every day in house fires, dumbass.

Decades ago i survived a house only because I had left an empty aerosol can of mousse in a pile of clothes. That pile started burning and caused the can to explode and wake me. Otherwise the fire would have consumed me as well.