Why don’t houses have fire alarms? Commercial Fire Alarms in Homes - Unnecessary or Effective?

Well, I don't see any big problems with installing commercial fire alarms in houses besides the fact that if you set off the fire alarm while cooking, unlike smoke detectors where they stop going off when the smoke is clear, you have to manually reset the alarm from the panel.

Great video and well done on the presentation! I have never seen a fire alarm system in a home, but have heard of some with them and never knew why. Thanks for the explanation!

This is 100% on point. Great video!

Do you have any recommendations when doing a system test video for loudness that way the neighbours dont call the police for loudness? Because I wanna start a fire alarm collection.

Can you do why fire trucks in America don't have mirror writing in the front?

hi

I definitely prefer commercial fire alarms better than household smoke alarms because they look cooler

Awesome Video! I have 15 System Sensor i3 Sounders in my home which are all tied to a security system. When the alarm sounds, it does temporal 3 once, and then the security siren relay kicks in, which does 1 second with the alarm sounding, and then 1 second with the alarm silent.

Not true. Some homes do have red fire alarms. My house has a sprinkler fire alarm in my backyard above my side door.

My neighborhood state ran group home has a commercial fire alarm system

We have spectralert advance horn strobes

Hello! I like dual Lite!

I hope to have the opportunity to work with you!🥰

I’ve seen fire alarm systems installed in houses before but they were mainly fire alarm collectors systems that they installed themselves in their houses. I do not have a fire alarm system in my house because I hate strobes. Now I do have a bunch of smoke alarms located throughout my house that go off all the time.

My Smoke/Heat/Freeze detector is set up to my security system, which is connected to the fire department. They will be called A if I'm not home and any S/H/F sensor is triggered or B when the Security company calls and I say yes, fire.

one big convenience and safety upgrade is a central battery backup that self maintains
people often dont replace their battery or it becomes exponentially expensive to do so
sealed alarms are not the awnser as those introduce more problems than they have ever solved

nothings simpler than 12V SLA

Funny this video showed up in my feed! I was looking into home fire alarm systems, and was appalled by how crap the options are. Any recommendations for a good fire alarm system for the home?

They are common in the northeast U.S. But they are usually special-needs homes, if smaller, otherwise, I would think at least closer to at least around 2,500 square-feet house.

Commercial fire alarms are definitely unnecessary in most homes, beyond enthusiast use -- though I do think conventional home smoke alarms could be improved feature-wise and take inspiration from commercial systems, particularly a system-wide "silence" button, as well as identifying the originating detector. Perhaps a tiny display on the unit that says the reason why it's going off. It wouldn't even make them more expensive, and it wouldn't be too complicated to send data packets over the interconnect wire.

Nest kinda tried this, but those are very expensive smoke alarms that are out of reach for most homeowners.

I think having a few extra features like that could make the difference between people easily silencing the alarm and going to check the alleged location of smoke, and running around the house taking alarms out of the ceiling waiting for the beeping to stop.

what about a mansion and more than a single family home?

Before watching the video, I believe that the cost of installation is the biggest factor and for small homes it may just be overkill. Larger dwellings are another story.

There’s a Papa Gino’s in my city that doesn’t even have a fire alarm system

Practically, it all boils down to how much a homeowner would want to invest in a fire alarm system. New homes here in the state of California are required to have sprinkler systems installed since 2007. A homeowner can get a contractor to install an actual fire alarm system but it isn't practical, 5-10k on a brand new fire alarm system is a heavy budget to put into a home where $40 smoke detectors do the job. Another issue is National, State, and local fire code regulations which mandate annual inspections for these systems (in the state of California we do not mandate annual inspections for home fire sprinkler systems but advise the homeowners to maintain their systems). A good reference on fire code regulations is to go to ICC's website, state fire code website (i.e. CFC for California), or NFPA. Overall nice video covering the topic, this was one of my presentation topics to give with my FD as a reserve inspector.

Also, I noice residential buildings do not have exit signage. Every other buildings like churches require exit signage and independent homes don t.

I don’t think houses need fire alarm systems. I think they should rather have sprinkler systems due to the high amount of synthetic materials in homes nowadays

why not a smoke alarm system that stays activated unless manully shut off by holding the reset button for 6 seconds. I find it stupid that at least modern smoke alarms dont just latch on when their is a fire. e.g. if fire detected start beeping until menully shut off and if smoke clears before then DONT STOP BEEPING!

I am good with just the smoke detectors installed in our house. We do have a security system with a fire protection feature but it is not activated and we don’t feel like we actually need it.

As a fire alarm tech with some security experience I appreciate the benefits of a real fire alarm system but the problem is that if you have one then they not only cost more but where I live you need an Engineer involved and ofc you need to have annual inspections and I can tell you that most home owners will NOT do the maintenance required.

For myself I would be willing to run a security system wired up as a fire alarm since that is a good middle ground, providing most of the benefits of a conventional alarm (or on some systems addressable) but without the legal requirements related to maintenance.

In a majority of new home construction, smoke detectors are paired with carbon monoxide detectors that are daisy chained together and each detector is backed up with individual 9 volt batteries

1. money
2. see first point
3. that's all

I know group homes have commercial fire alarms. Because I went to visit one in 2010 and an other one in 2012. The first one I went to had a EST system with Edwards Integrity horn strobes. The second one was an older fire lite or Notifer system. With the first generation Wheelock AS and BG10 pull stations. I don’t know where the panels were I’m guessing in the garage.

We bought some farm land a while back. And for whatever reason. The barn. Which is massive. Has a full fire alarm system. Gentex commander 3s on chime. Im guessing it was for the milk machines or the workshop with welding tools. Its neat. I removed the dialer from the system because we dont need it going off on accident.

insurance discount?

I want one for GRANDIOSITY! Make everybody JEALOUS of me.

How are you allowed to have a commercial system yourself?

I am a fan of the late 90/00's Simplex Grinnell system.

This Is becoming common in more modern homes. At One Point, Houses didnt typically have these systems unless they were being used for commercial purposes(i.e, Daycare or Group Home/Residential Units)

Domestic fire alarm systems should function the same or similar way as a commercial or industrial fire alarm system, but this time, connecting it to the fire station(s) would be optional.

The closest enough thing for me to have a fire alarm system in a house was a fire alarm system in an apartment building that I used to live in. And that fire alarm went off a little frequently; sometimes at night even. 😅

I remember that when I was living in Florida, I saw 2 commercial fire alarms in my apartment.

On your fire alarm annunciator I saw that it says Cumberland Farms Northborough, Massachusetts. I live near Northborough. Why does it say Cumberland Farms? Do you live in a Cumberland Farms?😂

Do you live in Massachusetts?

I will give credit to first alert who even on their cheapest smoke alarms, are designed to have the green led flash after the alarm stops on interconnected setups. That way you know exactly which alarm went off. Also on their more advanced alarms, interconnected or not, it will flash the red light continually after the alarm goes off. It forces the user to push the button to reset it to normal after the fact.

Idk why but I have a fear of smoke detectors and fire alarms. I find these videos quite interesting but the fear is what caused me to move from my modern luxury apartment and went to an apartment built in the 80’s. If commercial fire alarm systems were forced to be in all single family homes I’d try to save money for a tiny home. 😅

Since they renovated about a year ago, my apartment has kind of a hybrid system and it's hella annoying. It's based on smoke detection, but when it triggers it blares commercial grade strobe alarms through the subsection of the complex(~5 apartments). As a person sensitive to loud, unexpected sounds this is AWFUL because it gets triggered by people cooking/smoking/whatever regularly. It also makes it largely ineffective because we've all learned to ignore it since it goes off every few weeks. I had to install an air purifier in my own apartment to stop setting it off every time I cooked. AFAIK there are no pull stations anywhere(at least that I've seen, maybe in the non residential parts?), but it does trigger notification in the main office and they have to silence it(which they tend to do very quickly because we've all complained like a dozen times.) I'm guessing the reason for all this is because this apartment complex is largely elderly/disabled housing but... it seems counterproductive because as I've said we've all just learned that loud alarm means one of our neighbors wasn't careful enough cooking again. We also have "Help" pull cords that trigger alarm in the main office too. Anyway thanks for a glimpse of a part of the world most of us never see!

Edit: After writing this I did a little more research and it seems this apartment complex advertises itself as "Strictly ADA compliant" and maybe that has something to do with it. Also I don't know for certain that they are using ionization based detection it's just my guess since it's SO sensitive. We have separate "normal" smoke alarms as well that aren't interconnected, as well as CO alarm. In addition to the speaker strobes in the units, there is also one in front of each of our apartment doors on the outside!