Smoke Detector

socknitster wrote:Mine are in the middle of the rooms, pretty much. And the one near the circuit breaker box is just a few feet from it.

I believe the rationale for putting the smoke right over the door is if there's smoke in the hallway you want it to trigger the detector as soon as possible. Putting the detector in the middle of the room means the room has to fill with that much more smoke before the concentration is high enough to trigger it.

Putting one right by the breaker box is an excellent idea ... in my case, the area between the breaker box and the detector is pretty much full of empty cardboard boxes, so I'm sure a fire at the panel won't take any time at all to trigger the detector... :-P

Ken,

I get what you are saying, but if the fire starts in that room, it takes more time to get to the door than the middle of the room. I don't know, I guess you just have to evaluate the risks and talk yourself through your own home and put them where they make the most sense to you. The best thing is just to have several to give yourself enough warning. Every house will be different. And there may be codes you should follow, I have no idea, I never checked into that--our house passed inspection with only 1 30year old detector when we bought it.

In my case the circuit breaker box is a huge worry for me. The house is 30 years old and is pretty maxed on the circuit breakers. We should upgrade to a bigger service box, but it will cost $1000 for no appreciable added value, you know what I mean? One time when the electrician was here fixing something he said one of the breakers was hot--temperature hot--which he said was very unusual and he replaced it. Now I worry about it all the time and occasionally open the box to feel them and see if any are running a temperature, lol! You guys can chuckle about me to yourselves. I'm not sure why I'm so terrified of fire. It just freaks me out!

Jen

[quote="Stevoreno"][quote="drummergirl410"]I had wondered about that myself. At times things have happened and I couldn't even smell it with the mask on. The other week though I woke up in the middle of the night with the strangest smell and it was stong too! It smelled like it had a hint of smoke kind of. Once I got aroused enough to try to think about it, I nearly panicked! I ripped off the mask thinking my ResMed machine was catching fire. Then my brain caught up with me and I nearly fell out of bed laughing. My mom had put a roast beef in the crock pot to cook overnight. The smell had by then permeated the house and had made its way into my room and my xPAP as well. Thankfuly after I remembered what it was, it turned out to be a good smell. I put the mask back on and fell back to sleep once I got myself over the mistake I had made. There is a smoke alarm right outside my room though. I also have asthma and can't tollerate any kind of smoky smell at all. Being visually impaired also makes me use my sense of smell more. I think it is even hightened when I'm waking up but not fully aroused, hence the roast beef incident. Those facts plus the fact that fire scares the living daylights out of me makes it pretty unlikely that I would sleep through it. I won't take my chances though and keep the smoke alarm working.