120VAC single station Smoke Alarms with battery Backup. Too many times they are improperly installed

 It just amazes me the stupidity and laziness in this country when it comes to public safety

I was recently called to a small apartment complex where an elderly lady said here Heat detector in her kitchen was beeping.

Management asked me to check it out as I recently took over and take care of the complexes fire system .

Now normally the heat detectors in kitchen apartments  are hardwired to the Fire system and have no means by which they would beep.

But this was not the case the lady insisted it was beeping .

Well upon examination what i found was a 120VAC powered heat with 9 volt back up battery

These typically are wired and interconnected with Residential Smoke Alarms .

So it did not belong there.  It was suppose

to be a hardwired heat to fire system not 120 volts like other apartments.

So I carefully removed it and found nothing but the base underneath 

The 120vac harness was missing and it was being run by just the 9 volt battery a total and complete

misapplication of the unit and highly illegal to do..

Ends up the installers who put the fire system in where too lazy to Finnish job properly and rigged up this improper set up. 

But this is not the first time I have seen this all too often 120VAC interconnected smaoke alarms are improperly installed and happens all over the place.

It needs to stop because lives are on the line. They are to be powered and interconnected by 120 Vac and not just the back up battery.

I had a case years ago where dealer named Brent Young  who is out of business and went to jail for ripping off customers tried using 120 interconnect smoke alarms by wiring them to a home burg / fire system. 

So are the smoke alarms where you live , work and stay wired properly? 

good chance they are not .