REALLY dumb question about Smoke/Carbon Monoxide detectors...

Your dogs cannot dial 911?  Sheesh.  Parents these days.  Sorry, I cannot offer any useful information, only extremely un-useful mocking comments.

Edited by crazyyella 2009-07-02 12:55 PM

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Never trained them.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I looked up the model number of what I thought was the carbon monoxide detector...it was actually a smoke detector.  How is this for crazy...that one is hardwired to the house...the other one was just a "sham".  It really looks like they just stuck it up there to cover the hole with wires in it!

I was going to buy a carbon monoxide detector to hide the hole...I figured at least then it would be something useful.  But from what y'all said it won't do much good up at the ceiling.

Now I just have a hole in the wall in my hallway...what to do, what to do.

If you are still uncertain of whether you have a smoke or CO detector - you can likely take a trip down to your local firehall.  They should be only pleased to help you with identifying which it is you have and making recomendations on what to replace them with if replacement is required. 

Men Don't hang pictures! just duct tape and plaster will be fine.

I worked for an alarm company for a couple of years and sold a few hundred systems.  CO detectors are never hardwired to the house because, basically, it would be a liability for the security company--if you had a serious CO leak you wouldn't last 5 minutes. 

Who installed your system, by the way?  ADT?  We had tons of problems with them.  Smoke detectors  are generally placed outside the bedrooms and 1/floor except for the basement (that's where the CO will generally be placed).  I'd just give your security company a call and see what they have on file for what's installed in the house.  Chances are that the 'inspector' came in and checked to see if everything that was connected to the system worked and, since your smoke detector wasn't, he missed it.  if it IS a smoke detector and it's not connected I'd be POd

It was ADT and I did call them...they had it on record that they had pinged the smoke detector and it came up good.  Not sure if you saw my post above, but I checked the model number of the thing on the wall (that IS hardwired somehow I think...tough to tell...but the wires go into the wall and are surrounded by muchos gooey stuff) and it IS a smoke detector.  The only one I took off the wall that had capped wires behind it appears to maybe have just been covering a hole in the wall....

Was your security system installed when the house was being built, or did you have it installed after you moved in?

Most companies will set up wireless systems if the drywall is already up--90% of hardwired systems are installed as the house is being built, either as a stand-alone, hard-wired (detectors are just connected to each other [not connected to any monitoring station]--when one goes off they all go off) or a hard-wired security system (connected to the monitoring station).  If your others are hard-wired they are either hard-wired to each other or hard-wired to the security system.

if ADT pinged it and it's fine then it's set up as a wireless system.  I'm not sure what your model# is, so it may have the capability for both a hard-wire install and a wireless setup. 

Check how many smoke detectors you have and call ADT to see how many they pinged. 

OR, (this is what I would do) set off the smoke detector and see if they answer, then just report a false alarm and call off the fire dept (they'll call you and someone else on your emergency contact list before they send anyone to your house).  If they don't, set off another one to see if they answer.  If they don't, cancel your contract and get a Brinks or APX system.  If it's already a wireless sytem get APX (Brinks will hardwire and it's expensive).

When we were switching systems for our customers ADT would sometimes take hours to realize that we had turned off or cut the connection to their monitoring stations.  People wouldn't believe us until we pulled the plug and waited. 


I'd just make sure that your system is being monitored correctly and the response time is adequate.

Edited by Israelg48 2009-07-04 11:34 PM