You Should Know

This is the strat. They aren't even any more expensive than a "cheap" smoke detector once you factor in the cost of batteries (not to mention the cost of all the sleepless nights when the infernal thing is beeping because the battery is low)

New ones had the same pigtail as the old one (both were Kiddie brand), but I did have one I had to rewire. As far as I can tell, they do not have a dedicated circuit, so I had to shut down the entire house.

The half life for americium 241 is like 450 years. The 10 year replacement has nothing to do with decay. It's just a non specific safety in case any of the electronics or board etc start to fail. Photoelectric detectors have the same 10 year recommendation as a max.

It's actually recommend by many organizations (like the NFPA) to replace photoelectric detectors more often than ionization detectors, if anything.

This is plain WRONG and DANGEROUS.

The issue is NOT the Americum but the natural degration of the photoelectric cells and the accumulation of dirt within the test chamber.

Even before that time the risk for false alarms is increased substantially by degration before the chances for sucessful alarming decrease rapidly. Due to that they actually withstand aging actually worse than ionisation based devices.

Sientific sources?

Here

here.

Here

Here

(Besides: Americum has a decay time of over 400 years,btw)

Alec in his own video mentions that the issue isn't that the Americium decays, but that the electronics themselves age and fail, which applies to both the ionization detectors and photoelectric detectors.

This is one of the things you just don't wanna mess with, as such a failure is completely unpredictable, and from what I know some manufacturers are even beginning to make detector units with non-replaceable batteries, intended to be replaced whole when the battery dies after years of runtime, to make it impossible to keep using a detector after its rated lifetime.

This is anecdotical but I moved into an apartment with a 30 year old ionizing smoke detector, and the failure was it was too sensitive, I assume because there were less electrons being emitted from the radioactive element, any faint smoke caused it to go off. Eventually it got into a state where it would always be in an alert state, and was beeping 100% of the time, which was when the landlord finally replaced it.

My assumption with the 10 year replacement recommendation for Americium based smoke detectors is to replace it before it becomes too sensitive and annoying, because they were worried some people would remove the battery and just live without an active smoke detector.

It sucks ass. I've gone through about 5 of them well short of 10 years. I do see that this brand released a new version, but this is the one I had. Absolute garbage. They kept giving false positives, and they have no replaceable batteries so they just become E-waste after you disable them. This is the one I had.

https://www.homedepot.com/pep/Kidde-10-Year-Worry-Free-Battery-Smoke-and-Carbon-Monoxide-Detector-Photoelectric-Sensor-3-Pack-21029899-3-21029899-3/203534175?

I'd say stupid. I live in a country where most houses are brick walls + concrete floors, and smoke detectors are still common + since a few years also mandated by the government.

The government mandate came after it was found that of the dozens of people that died every year from house fires, 95% suffocated in their sleep.

Some numbers for my region: ~7m population, 70% of houses had smoke detection before the mandate, on average 63 died per year from house fires.

Some incorrect approximative math: Lets assume that the amount of dead could have been halved if those 30% houses had 2 smoke detectors per person (lets say 2 cheap ones for 2x20 euros per 10 years): 7m x 0.3 x 2 x 20€ /10 /63 x2 = a cost of 267€ per year per life saved. Imo that's a no brainer, it'd be stupid to not invest in smoke detection.

Other countries use less flammable materials in their construction. Wood frame construction is very common in the US due to drastically lower cost of wood vs block. We also had something called balloon frame construction for many years which made it much more likely for fire to travel within the walls. That being said not having detectors isn't a great idea either since most are combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

They always wait until night.

Photoelectric smoke detectors also need to be replaced every ten years or so, and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is well within safe levels as long as you aren't taking them apart to eat the ^241^Am. They're sensitive to different things but the photoelectric ones are probably better suited to modern home fires (but they're more prone to false-positives from kitchen smoke).

Pointless America Bad and radiation fear-mongering.

Maybe, if it is made past a certain date. Mine in the image, from 2005, did not.

That's a reasonable reaction to the current state of things.