new builds --- what kind of smoke detector systems are being installed?

ngl, $300 for all that screams short life, false alarms and glitches. i.e chinese special.


Speaking the name of the room would be very helpful though. All of my hardwired are starting to chirp from low batts. Pain to find the one chirping.

The biggest reason to have alarms is just being able to put the fire starter out as quickly as possible. Could be the difference in a minor kitchen fire thats fixed with opening the windows and a complete house fire. And when you are asleep, being woken by a fire usually means its gone too far to do anything but gtfo.

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are builders still puttting shitty 9v battery 'hardwired network' giant plate devices in that turn yellow in 2 years and chirp constantly?

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They did 5yrs ago when I built our house and I can stand them because I can never find the one that is setting them off.

From my years in the fire department (relatively recently) I never came across any smart systems like that, and we responded to a lot of upper class homes and new builds.

The system in my house has a "primary detector" in the hallway and smaller satellite detectors in each room. They are all connected so that when one goes off they all go off, and the primary announces which room is in active alarm. They are also powered by my breaker panel. The battery in each one is for backup when the power goes out. They were changed when we bought the house 7 years ago, and when we replaced all the detectors in 2023 when they expired. ETA they each have a 10 year lithium battery.

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are builders still puttting shitty 9v battery 'hardwired network' giant plate devices in that turn yellow in 2 years and chirp constantly?

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Yes because that's code. You can spend more but not sure what it really gets you except a barrery monitor you can look at and it'll tell you which one is beeping. You need a tall step stool in a 9 or 10 ft ceiling house to reach them.

There will be one in every bedroom and every hallway outside a bedroom. Also every story. No longer in kitchens.

I installed a LOT of X-Sense sensors months ago in our rather large house, basement, garage and outside. We really like it. I started with one base station and a few sensors to test it out and after a couple of months I had significantly expanded the system. The app handles multiple base stations by address so if you own multiple properties you can monitor them all at the same time. I used this to my advantage and use multiple base stations in our house as I have described below. I gave each base station, address names like Home Safety, Home Security, etc. instead of a physical address. Each base station can have something like 50 sensors each.

This system is so customizable and smart, way more than any wired security system like ADT. Each sensor type typically has numerous customizations and can also alarm a base station and/or push notification to our smart phones. I installed 4 base stations to segregate the sensors by alarm types. Depending on which base station goes off, we instantly know what alarm type went off. You can change the alarm sound and volume for any sensor on the base station, but with a lot of different sensor types it's really helpful to segregate them to different base stations strategically placed in the house.

Every sensor is battery operated and long range (up to 1700' away) using 2.4GHz transmission to a base station which is AC powered and WiFi. Signal strength and battery life are reported for each sensor in the app so you know when to replace batteries or if there are any signal issues. No signal issues so far plus battery life is up to 5 or 10 years. If a base station loses WiFi a push notification is sent to your smartphones. We have a very good mesh network so WiFi is very reliable although there are very infrequent temporary issues with WiFi service (power outage, etc). Everything comes back to life automatically if WiFi goes out.

The Combo Smoke/CO2 detectors go off locally and are all connected to each other by their own 2.4GHz network so they go off locally even if WiFi is lost. You can also do a Fire Drill anytime you want to simulate a Fire or CO2 detection by any of your sensors.

I installed the Combo Smoke/CO2 sensors with Voice that tell which threat was detected and in which room instead of an alarm. If one sensor tells you there is smoke or CO2, all of those sensors send the same alarm by voice so there is instant notification of the location and threat via every sensor. I installed those all over the house and basement. I installed Heat sensors in the garage. All of those are on one base station.

The next base station is my security base station. Any sensor alarm on it that goes off, we know if we are asleep because the base station alarm is in the bedroom. It has 3 keypads, door alarms, window alarms, a few solar motion lights protecting our courtyard, deck and screened porch, and also water leak sensors everywhere we need them. We are notified if any outside doors are left open. I didn't use any indoor motion detectors. I did turn off the beeps of door sensors when the system is in off mode so I don't wake my wife up if I go outside while she is asleep. I did also include mailbox alarms that I use as security alarms on my boats, kayaks and water bikes on our Lakeshore about 100' from our house. Any slight jar of my boats, kayaks or water bikes and I know about it even if I am away from the house. Also have cameras that notify me.

The third base station only has two mailbox sensors. One is inside our mailbox about 500' from the house through a heavily wooded lot. I attached the other mailbox sensor just under an outer ridge of the can under the back part of the garbage can lid. Now I get notifications when the mailbox is opened or when the garbage department empties our can. I used to have to walk 500' to check these.

The 4th base station has temperature and humidity detectors. I can keep tabs on mainly humidity around the house and basement. This lets me know if dehumidifiers need to be turned on or off. I also have one of these in the attic to let me know when I need to cut on attic exhaust fans .

This is a really good system for us. However we don't want or need a professional alarm monitoring service. We get audible alarms and push notifications set up exactly as desired. X-sense does have an optional professional alarm monitoring service, but I can't comment on it since we don't need that

The only thing this system will not do is I wanted any water leak sensor alarms to also cut the water off at a valve on the water supply pipe just inside the house. There are other systems that will do that so I might buy one of those and add an automatic water valve and replace all of my X-sense water leak detectors.