How to Replace Your Smoke Detector
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Smoke detectors are a critical way to protect your home and family from a fire disaster. I know what I’m talking about - I lost about all my possession to a house fire.
37 years ago, I was a single mom with three kids and had a fire in my newly-rented home. Thank God none of us were harmed but most of our belongings were destroyed including the kid’s school memories, photo albums, and most of our clothes that were waiting to be laundered in the garage where the fire started. Not that many homes back then had smoke detectors. Today, we would never be without them!
There are two basic types of smoke detectors; ionization and photoelectric. Ionization smoke alarms are more responsive to flaming fires while photoelectric smoke alarms respond quicker to smoldering fires. Since we can’t predict the type of fire that may occur, having some of both types of detectors in your home seems to make sense. That’s what we do.
Ionization-type smoke alarms have a small amount of radioactive material between two electrically charged plates, which ionizes the air and causes current to flow between the plates. When smoke enters the chamber, it disrupts the flow of ions, thus reducing the flow of current and activating the alarm.
Photoelectric smoke alarms work in a different way. The alarm aims a light source into a sensing chamber at an angle that is away from the sensor. If smoke enters the chamber and reflects light onto the light sensor, the alarm triggers.
Most building codes state that, for a residential home, there needs to be one smoke detector in each bedroom and at least one smoke detector on each level of a multi-level home.
In today’s episode, we’ll be replacing a “hard-wired” detector - meaning that it is connected to your home’s electrical system just like the lights are. Since these detectors are electrified all the time, why do they need to have batteries? The batteries serve as a power backup source. If there was a fire and your electricity has gone off, the battery would still sound the alarm if smoke is detected by the alarm.
What about the other type of smoke detectors that do not attach to the home’s electrical circuits? There are two types of alarms that run completely on batteries. One uses replaceable batteries that should be replaced at the interval recommended for that system. The other type comes with a 10-year battery encased in the smoke alarm and once the battery’s time is up, you simply discard and replace the whole alarm. We’ll talk more about them in another episode.
For our demonstration, we are using an alarm that is “hard-wired” meaning it’s connected to the house electrical system. In our case, the electrician that wired our house used the standard procedure for smoke detectors so that multiple detectors can communicate when there is a fire.
If your house was wired this way, you will see a colored connecting wire in the bundle of wires in the ceiling and you can connect the colored wire on your new detector to the existing colored wire to establish the connection between all the alarms on that circuit.
When changing out a smoke alarm that is “hardwired”, the first step is to turn off the electricity, at the breaker box, for the room where the smoke alarm is being changed. Use a current tester, after turning off the power, to make sure there is no current before you start the project.
Secondly, remove the old smoke alarm by taking off the wire nuts that are connecting the live wires to the smoke detector wires. You also need to replace the old rim ring with the new one that came with your new detector.
Next, you will connect the new smoke detector by connecting wires white to white, black to black and secure them with the wire nuts. If there is a colored wire in the bundle, connect it to the colored wire on your detector with a wire nut. If there is no colored wire (other than black, white, or green) coming out of the box, leave the cap on the colored wire on the detector. DO NOT connect it to any of the wiring.
Now push all the wires back into the box, and reinstall the mounting ring. Then lift the detector up into place and twist it onto the mounting base.
Once you have connected the new detector, test it with the test button. And now, you’re better protected against the tragedy of fire. And with what you’ve just learned, you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
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