Recently moved into a 2 year old townhouse and the smoke detectors are
hardwired all on one circuit.
If one goes off, do they all go off?

On Aug 11, 9:34 am, wrote:
Recently moved into a 2 year old townhouse and the smoke detectors are
hardwired all on one circuit.
If one goes off, do they all go off?

Probably: That now seems to be standard here if there is more than one
inhabited floor.
And some 30 years ago was the rule in all townhouses owned and
operated by our Public Housing Commission.
Mandatory AC operation instead of the usual 9 volt battery operation
was used because children might steal the batteries to operate the
then popular transistor radios!
In a friends extensively and recently renovated (to code) house the
new smoke alarms on each of 3 floors are linked. They appear to be AC
operated with apparently a battery backup?

You can test it by pressing the "TEST" button on one.

If they are linked they will all go off.

That depend upon your local codes. Pull one unit down and see if all three
wires connected to it are attached to wires in the outlet box, if so, they
are interconnected



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Recently moved into a 2 year old townhouse and the smoke detectors are
hardwired all on one circuit.
If one goes off, do they all go off?

On Aug 11, 7:39 am, wrote:
You can test it by pressing the "TEST" button on one.

If they are linked they will all go off.

Funny, that's not how my hard wired ones work. You can test them
individually, but setting one off, with smoke will cause them all to
go off. Of course, when one fails and sets them all off, it always
happens around 4 AM... :-)

JK

On Aug 11, 7:54 am, "RBM" rbm2(remove wrote:
That depend upon your local codes. Pull one unit down and see if all three
wires connected to it are attached to wires in the outlet box, if so, they
are interconnected

wrote in message

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Recently moved into a 2 year old townhouse and the smoke detectors are
hardwired all on one circuit.
If one goes off, do they all go off?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Most likely they are interconnected. All the ones where they were on
multiple levels and wired on one cricuit that I've seen in the last
20+ years have been. I would think this would be required by code in
any new townhouse type dwelling. The obvious idea is that if the one
in the basement goes off, you want the one in the 3rd floor bedroom to
go off to make sure you wake up.

On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 06:34:20 -0500, wrote:

Recently moved into a 2 year old townhouse and the smoke detectors are
hardwired all on one circuit.
If one goes off, do they all go off?



Smoke detectors should be tested frequently(read instructions), this
pondering should give you more reason to test them.

tom @ www.Consolidated-Loans.info