We recently purchased a super fancy set of revolutionary Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector. These things talk to each other and alert us to the specific location of the room the problem is occurring in. Fantastic!
Nest Protect Advanced Wireless Smoke Detector Available on Amazon.
We replaced the existing 30 year old hard wired smoke detector alarms with the Nest Protects. These things will even contact you phone if something happens. I got an email from the first one when I shut down the power for the second installation. Well done Nest team! It is not clear are old ones would have even gone off (when removing them the tag noted they expired in 2003) in a fire situation. Will yours?
Do it yourself to save money
This amazing technology combination is available for only $99 each. And an installer can be hired to connected wired ones for $80. We opted to pass on that and to save the money and the hassle (for all involved) of taking a day to have someone out. The first one took me about three hours of watching videos and carefully proceeding (mostly issues with removing the old one). The last one I installed took less than thirty minutes from opening the package to the final test.
Take your time
If conditions make sense, do the installation yourself. Watch the videos (as many times as you need). Follow all instructions and expect to run into snags that will require more research and take additional time. This isn’t a race and you aren’t being graded on efficiency. If you are like us you will find the experience saves money which can be used for private school tuition and is more rewarding than taking off work for an installer to arrive.
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