There’s little doubt that working smoke alarms are the most important safety devices in your home. So now that you’ve set your clocks ahead for daylight saving time, we hope you remembered to change the batteries in your smoke alarms as well. And to check the manufacture date of your alarm. If it’s ten years old or more, you should replace the entire alarm, not just the batteries. Our new video on smoke alarms, which you can also see in many retail stores, helps get this important safety message out to all consumers.
 
Smoke alarms are essential safety devices proven to save lives, but we think they can be improved.
 
There are two types of sensor technology used in smoke alarms. Ionization sensors respond faster to flaming fires while photoelectric sensors respond faster to smoldering fires. It would seem logical that dual-sensor alarms with both ionization and photoelectric sensors would be the best choice, and they are most of the time. Ionization alarms are more prone to false alarms from the kitchen and bathroom such as burnt toast and shower steam. That’s why we recommend using photoelectric-only alarms outside of those rooms, and dual-sensor alarms in the rest of the house.  But that advice is hard to remember.  Wouldn’t it be nice if ionization sensors could be designed to be less prone to false alarms so that dual-sensor alarms could be used everywhere in the house? Or why not call the alarms whole house and kitchen/bath to eliminate confusion about which type works best where.
 
There are a few (very few) ionization and dual sensor models that claim to be more resistant to nuisance alarms. Kidde has one and FireRex (now owned by Kidde) has another. We have not tested them yet but will do so in the next round of smoke alarm tests. We won’t know how "intelligent" the alarms are until we test the claims.
 
Interconnected alarms cause all alarms to sound when just one senses smoke.  But usually that requires all the smoke alarms in your home be made by the same manufacturer. Adapters enable hardwired alarms to be connected with those made by a competitor, but hardwired alarms must be installed by an electrician, which can be expensive. Wireless inter-connectivity solves this problem, but again most brands use their own, unique radio frequency for communicating between units.  There needs to be a standard frequency so any one brand of interconnected alarm can communicate with all others.
 
Finally, we know that the sound of smoke alarms does not always rouse sleeping children or older and hearing impaired adults who may have hearing loss in the frequency range that some alarms emit.  We think it might be better if alarms were required to have rising and falling frequencies, akin to police car sirens, to enhance their effectiveness in waking all sleeping people.
 
We look forward to seeing smarter smoke alarms. But in the meantime, it's important to install the ones currently available at key locations in your house.

—Don Mays