Hi, viewers.
Joe from AlarmGrid.
And today, we're going to talk about carbon monoxide
detector functionality.
What a carbon monoxide detector is, is a detector
that detects carbon monoxide.
It's very important to have inside of your home
as carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless,
so you can't smell it and you can't see it.
It kills people in their sleep for the most part, when
it does affect a home and it's a very dangerous thing to happen.
If your system is monitored by a security company
and you do have central station monitoring,
there's a very good chance that if your carbon monoxide
detector goes off that they're going to immediately
send dispatch to your house from the fire department
as soon as they get that signal.
And in fact, there is a law that says
they are required to dispatch on those signals if it comes in.
So know that when you're installing a carbon monoxide
detector, keep your system on test when you're putting it up
because if that thing goes off and they get that alarm signal,
you're going to have to deal with the fire department.
Now carbon monoxide detectors, they
come in three different varieties
but they all will do the same thing,
they detect carbon monoxide.
The three different types of sensors
are biomimetic, metal oxide semiconductors,
and electrochemical.
They all function in a slightly different way.
The electrochemical sensor, they actually
have sensors that have chemical painted on top of them.
And when that detects carbon monoxide,
it triggers the sensor.
Biomimetic sensors have a gel inside of them
that'll change color.
When that changes color, the sensor
will trigger, telling the alarm system that there
is carbon monoxide in the area.
And metal oxide semiconductor sensors,
they have a silica chip that reacts to carbon monoxide.
That will trigger the sensor when it goes off.
So as you can see, all three sensors,
they have a different way of activation
but they'll all tell you if there's carbon monoxide
present in the area.
When you're going to install your carbon monoxide detectors,
usually at the bare minimum, you want to put one on each floor.
If you want to go above and beyond,
putting them by all the sleeping areas
is a good idea and in the areas nearby the garage.
You don't want to put them in the area where there's
fuel burning appliances or in the garage itself as that'll
probably give you a false alarm.
Another place you wouldn't want to install it
is in a furnace room or nowhere else
where there is an appliance that's burning fuel,
because that gas in the room could trigger the carbon
monoxide detector and that may just
be normal operational gas that's not leaking into the house.
Really, you want them in your living areas,
nearby places that have that.
So nearby the garage or nearby a utility room in the hallway.
You definitely want it in all of your sleeping areas if you can.
But at very least, you want one carbon monoxide detector
on each floor.
Other aspects of a carbon monoxide detector
is that there's two different types.
There's hardwired and there's wireless.
If you are using a hardwired carbon monoxide detector,
it is not recommended to connect it to a hardwired to wireless
translator.
So you're going to want a home-run these all the way back
to your panel or to an expansion module that's
also wired to your panel, depending on what kind
of system you have.
The wireless carbon monoxide detectors, they work as such,
they're wireless devices.
You do have to make sure that they're
compatible with your systems so that you can program them
into the system to make them work.
One more aspect on the wired carbon
monoxide detectors is that when you do set them up,
you want to program them as normally open
and then you want to wire the resistor at the carbon monoxide
detector in parallel.
This will supervise the whole line,
and the reason you do normally open
is that for the most part, fire devices,
you want to set up as normally open devices.
So the loop is open.
When it triggers, it closes it, tells the system
that there's carbon monoxide in the area,
and will trigger an alarm.
If you have any questions all about carbon monoxide
detectors, how they work or how to install them,
feel free to head to our website, www.alarmgrid.com.
Send us an email to support@alarmgrid.com
or give us a call at 888-818-7728.
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Thanks for watching and have a great day.