Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Fire alarms
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Old 01-06-2022, 09:05 AM
jrref jrref is offline
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It's interesting. I went to their web site and looked at the video. Although it looks like a "scare" tactic it's not. Most people don't realize or understand that Fire, Carbon Monoxide AND Water need to be monitored via a system that can alert you and or some central station. Although the primary goal is to protect your family, you also don't want your house burning down or flooded when you are not home.

I can't comment on the cost of this system, but you can get a system from Simplisafe, ADT and others to monitor all this. If you don't feel it's worth it you can replace your smoke/carbon monoxide detectors with detectors from Nest. They are about $100/detector but they last 10 years, fit right where your existing detectors are and has an App to alert you. It will tell you on the app and by speech when it smells smoke, when it's getting to the point of sounding the alarm and when the smoke dissipates after you take care of the problem. You can label every detector so it will speak which one has the alarm so in the middle of the night you don't have to guess what's going on. It also does an automated check each month and sends you a report.

Even with these more comprehensive and expensive systems, they don't have devices to turn of the water main if water is detected. To me this is a big problem. You can be out shopping and a washer hose bursts and you come home to a flooded house. You can Google systems that detect and shut off the water such as Homeseer and others. Out of everything they talk about in the video, water and flooding is probably one of the most likely events that will happen over the time you live in your home since most people don't routinely change their washer, sink and toilet hoses or change their water heater until it leaks. BTW Rheem makes a water heater with a water sensing and shutoff system called Gladiator. It's slightly more expensive than the regular heater but it will protect you from water heater flooding.

Hope this helps.