Smoke Detectors [RE-wrenches]

[Joel Davidson]

A customer writes:
Do you have any information about phantom loads with smoke detectors? My
understanding was that because the load is constant it is considerable.
Building code here requires that I have 6 detectors and they must be
wired together so they all go off at once. They are, of course, electric
with battery backup and the builder and I thought we could unplug them
and run them off their internal batteries but if they are on battery
power they chirp
continuously. is there any way around this that you know of?

I reviewed previous postings about smoke detectors. Unless I missed
something, here's what I found:
1. Smoke detectors are a significant phantom load that keep the inverter
on.
2. Some wrenches report smoke detector problems with DR and SW
inverters.
3. Some wrenches modified smoke detectors to run on DC.
4. Some wrenches use BRK Electronics detectors, but some report problems
with same.
5. Some wrenches report customers switching out AC detectors with
battery detectors after inspection.
6. Trace said that the Firex brand has been known to have problems and
the Kidde tech said First Alert probably wouldn't work either.

I won't tell the customer to disable or modify smoke detectors. Is
switching to DC detectors the only work-around?

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