It is essential that every home be equipped with some kind of smoke detector. Whether you purchase battery-operated or hardwired smoke detectors is up to you—the most important thing is that your home has working smoke alarms that will alert you of danger so that you’ll have time to escape and call the fire department for prompt assistance. However, our Lafayette electricians believe that hardwired smoke detectors do have some advantages over their battery-operated brothers worth considering.
Benefits of Hardwired Smoke Detectors in Abbeville, Lafayette, & New Iberia
- Hardwired alarms can be interconnected. Because hardwired smoke detectors are wired right into your home’s electrical system, they can all be linked together. When one alarm is triggered, all of the alarms will go off. This can be extremely helpful because you can be alerted to a fire occurring on an entirely different floor of your home before the smoke even reaches your vicinity. This will give you more time to evacuate your home before the danger is right upon you. Some homeowner’s insurance policies will even offer a discount if you install hardwired smoke alarms in your home.
- There is a backup power source for added protection. Battery-operated smoke detectors have a single power source: batteries. A hardwired smoke detector, on the other hand, runs on electricity, and if for some reason that fails, it is backed up by batteries.
- Hardwired alarms will continue to sound until you shut them off. Whereas a battery-operated smoke alarm can only go off as long as the batteries still have juice, hardwired alarms can go off indefinitely until they are shut down. This can come in handy in instances when you are not home when the alarm first sounds or if a building has thick walls.
Installing hardwired smoke detectors is a job for licensed electricians. Because it involves electrical wiring, attempting this project on your own could lead to faulty wiring and an electrical hazard. If you think that hardwired smoke detectors are right for your home, contact Pipes & Plugs. We’ll be happy to set your home up with these potentially life-saving devices!