Residential Fire Alarm Questions, Woes, and.. more questions
Hi! After being woken up between 2 and 4am two too many times by apparently garbage Kidde interconnected 10 year battery (non-hardwired) fire alarms, my 3 year old and 6 month old sat mom and dad down and told us that we needed to get our shit figured out or else they will kick us to the curb.
Dad (me) subsequently has spent three too many hours diving into residential fire alarms options and opinions. Currently our home is not hardwired, and we are looking to balance safety without breaking the bank. Due to bad experiences, I'd like to move away from Kidde, though open to opinions on that. Local code requires that for non-hardwired alarms they must be interconnected. I need 8 units to comply with code.
Here is where I have run into a snag: interconnected sealed battery powered alarms from Kidde or First Alert are prohibitively expensive (e.g. this one: https://www.amazon.com/SMCO500V-Interconnect-Battery-Operated-Combination-Monoxide/dp/B0CV54Z1Q7?th=1 at 52 dollars a pop puts me at 450 pretty quick)
A quick search on Amazon brought up X-Sense, which seems to have gone through some controversy lately, having their products taken off due to compliance issues. Obviously I am not interested in any product that might be a danger to my family, but in doing some searching it seems like X-Sense has gotten their shit together and gotten ETL certified? See here. Searching through some of the model numbers, it seems like I could get 9 combo detectors that are interconnected and battery operated for less than 300. Saving 150 means a lot to my family right now.
I suppose my question to you all is: is X-Sense ok now? If not, should I just bite the bullet on the first alert ones? My other thought is to purchase 7 stand alone units, and two interconnected units, one upstairs, one downstairs.
Thank you for your help!