On Oct 25, 10:42*am, ransley wrote:

150 is what my alarm co wants to have their tech do it, I cant believe
most folks with monitored alarms will DIY. Replace them in 10 or 20 if
you want, and dont forget the alarm system that controls everything,
after all you reminded me electroncs dont last forever. But its a
waste of money

Oh, so you mean the installed price is $150 for a new one. Not the 20
year old units you have. You're a handy guy, did you ever see an
alarm tech do anything other than hooking up his computer to program
your panel that you couldn't do yourself? Like I said - you can buy a
quality smoke detector for forty or fifty bucks. How much do you pay
a month for your central monitoring? What does that work out to for
ten years?

Unless you are in a really sketchy neighborhood, it's rather unlikely
that the burglar alarm part of the system will pay for itself. It's
also likely that you will not be at home when the bad guys break in,
so all that happens is you lose some stuff which is probably insured
anyway. Having working smoke alarms doubles the likelihood that
people will survive a fire. That's another type of insurance isn't
it? It's also another type of risk entirely.

This newsgroup is full of DIYers, and more specifically the OP is
asking a specific question that you did not answer. Instead you gave
him your opinion which is based on your opinion and nothing more. You
find it convenient to ignore an independent testing and standards
organization, whose recommendation you were unaware of, because it
doesn't agree with your opinion.

Your alarm company has something to gain by installing a new one for
you. What does the NFPA have to gain?

R