Smoke / Carbon Detector Project - Help Needed!

[StreetThisEVO]

I am looking to replace all of my homes smoke / carbon detectors soon. I'd also like to but one to my detached garage as I just added (2) Mr. Heater natural gas heaters.

Here is what I'm thinking for the general layout:


House

(Main Floor) - Ceiling mounted battery powered smoke / carbon detector (centrally located in my hallway).

(Basement) - Ceiling mounted battery powered smoke / carbon detector (located centered between the electrical panel and my furnace / water heater / & AV rack).


Detached Garage

- Ceiling mounted hard-wired 110 Volt smoke detector (centrally located in the middle of the space).

- and -

- Wall mounted 110 Volt plug-in style carbon / explosive gas sensor with LCD read-out (centrally located between the two wall mounted heaters).


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I'd like all 3 detectors to talk to one another (wirelessly would be best). This way if I'm in the house and something happens in the garage I'll know about it. The issue is I would like the garage smoke detector to be deactivated when I'm in there working and the lights are on. I will eventually be installing motion sensors to trigger the lights to save energy if left on and nobody is present.

I do a lot of cutting / welding / sanding / etc.. that would most certainly trigger any smoke detector to go off. I'd hate for it to be 11 pm at night and the alarms in the house go off scaring my wife to death.

From my brief research most all of the hard-wired detectors I've found that can be linked to other similar devices have some form of battery back-up. And if the battery back-up is removed that detector will beep until it is replaced.

Has anyone ran into this before? Worst case I don't put a smoke detector in the garage. But I'd feel better at night knowing there is one there and I might be able to do something to prevent damage in the event it were to occur while I'm home.


Thanks!

 

[mach158]

First, you need more then two detectors in your house. You need to have a detector in each bedroom, one in the hallway, one in living room and one in basement. If the basement is separated into rooms then one in each room. Basically one for every "compartment" of your house.

Second, one detector is should be fine in the garage assuming no compartments and you have a ceiling.

Now to the disconnecting of the garage detector. All the wireless detectors that I am aware of have a battery backup to maintain the connection and function. So unless you want to unhook it from the ceiling every time you want to do work that would set it off you can get a hardwired detector that does not have battery backup but does not offer wireless connection.

You could put a hardwired non battery backup in the garage and connect it to a hardwired wireless detector that connects to the others in the house. That way you can switch off the hardwired in the garage and it will maintain a hard wire connection so once back on you have your system setup. Hope that makes sense.

 

[Scud67]

You should not put smoke detectors in the garage - you should put heat sensors in there. Locate them above where the hood of the car would be. That is "code" here, not sure about where you are.
Required detectors are: CO and smoke in each bedroom, top and bottom of every staircase and hallways (sometimes these are the same detector depending on the length of the hallway). No smoke/ CO detectors can be "turned off" by code either.
But - that all depends on if you want to go "by code" or not....

 

[Kaizen]

For hard wired detectors to all go off you need to run 14/3 between all of them. This is code now I believe but really hard to retrofit to do.
talk to your building or fire code local official. that's what they are there for. They can tell you your local code.
I can tell you mine wanted carbon monoxide wired below the ceiling on the wall as co is heavier so before it got to the ceiling the whole room would be filled. just the opposite with smokes.