Of course no one has a can of "smoke alarm test spray" on hand. 9_9 Maybe a candle held below the smoke alarm will do. Burning some upholstery foam would be like overkill but at least that would be easier to obtain than a can of simulated smoke.
For an ionization chamber type smoke detector to fail, the contact with the battery would have to corrode to the point that power was no longer going to the detector, at which point pressing the 'test' button would not work either. The alarm goes off when smoke interferes with the ionized particles and cuts the circuit maintained by the radioactive Americium. See https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/smoke-detectors.html If the charged plates in the chamber fail, the alarm would go off because the circuit would be broken. Ergo, I still don't see why smoke detectors need to be replaced every ten years except to keep us buying new ones. I call shenanigans.
I can see the light diode based smoke detectors failing early: either the LED's burn out or get full of dust, but then again, that would cause the alarm to go off.
Only the ten-year-battery models have sure fire built in obsolescence, so much so that if they fail early, you might only find out when your house burns down.
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chiming
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Date: 2024-11-05 02:35 am (UTC)From:For an ionization chamber type smoke detector to fail, the contact with the battery would have to corrode to the point that power was no longer going to the detector, at which point pressing the 'test' button would not work either. The alarm goes off when smoke interferes with the ionized particles and cuts the circuit maintained by the radioactive Americium. See https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/smoke-detectors.html If the charged plates in the chamber fail, the alarm would go off because the circuit would be broken. Ergo, I still don't see why smoke detectors need to be replaced every ten years except to keep us buying new ones. I call shenanigans.
I can see the light diode based smoke detectors failing early: either the LED's burn out or get full of dust, but then again, that would cause the alarm to go off.
Only the ten-year-battery models have sure fire built in obsolescence, so much so that if they fail early, you might only find out when your house burns down.