Just had a customer fight me on why I needed to drill through their crown molding for a hardwired smoke detector

Last Wednesday in a 1970s split-level in Portland, I spent 45 minutes explaining to a retired engineer that wireless relays don't magically work through two layers of aluminum foil insulation in his attic, has anyone else run into homeowners who think every new system can just be battery powered and stuck to the wall with double-sided tape?

3 comments

3 Comments

barbara_jenkins662d ago

The engineer probably sat there with a straight face thinking aluminum foil is just for baked potatoes, not a Faraday cage for smoke signals. Battery powered detectors are fine until someone forgets to swap the battery at 2 AM and the thing starts chirping like a dying cricket inside a wall cavity. Double-sided tape for a smoke detector is a special kind of optimism, like using duct tape to hold up a ceiling fan. These homeowners forget that codes exist because people died, not because electricians wanted to make their crown molding look like Swiss cheese.

phoenix_martin402d ago

That bit about "double-sided tape for a smoke detector is a special kind of optimism" really got me... it's like people think everything in life can be held together with a little stickiness and hope. But I've noticed this bigger pattern where folks treat safety stuff like it's optional decor, not something that literally keeps them from dying in a fire. It's the same kind of thinking where someone will argue that seatbelts are uncomfortable or that a bike helmet messes up their hair. We've gotten so used to things being easy and wireless that we forget some things need to be hardwired and bolted down for a reason.

adams.vera2d ago

Been there fixing this exact issue for a neighbor last month. Their smoke detector was hanging by one screw and a strip of packing tape, so I just drilled a proper hole and used a toggle bolt to secure it into the drywall. Took ten minutes and saved them from having it fall down at 3am and scaring the cat half to death. Battery powered ones work fine if you mark the change date right on the calendar with a big red circle, but that mounting has to be solid. You ever see one of those detectors come loose and start false alarming every time the furnace kicks on?