Like most houses built in the 1980s or earlier, our house came with old-school smoke detectors and not many of them. Both were in the upper hallway outside the bedrooms on the second floor. We had none downstairs or in any of the bedrooms. I guess the builder figured the smoke would rise through the atrium and eventually trigger the alarm, presumably waking up someone in one of the bedrooms behind their closed door.

Yeah, that didn’t sound very comforting to me, either.

In the 1990s, the building code changed to require new homes to have interconnected smoke detectors. That way if one went off, it activated all the others to increase their chances of being heard. Our first home had this feature, and I loved it. However, I didn’t want to hire an electrician to rewire my current home. My solution?

Kidde Wirelessly Interconnectable Smoke Detectors

Designed specifically for situations like ours, these detectors can talk to each other wirelessly. I installed one in each bedroom and two downstairs. If one detects smoke, everyone in the house will know about it within a few seconds. The setup was very simple, and they work great. The price wasn’t too bad, either. If your home doesn’t have interconnected smoke detectors, I highly recommend giving these a try.