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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house staff Works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question. How

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Speaker 1: do smoke detectors intercommunicate with each other? Battery powered smoke

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Speaker 1: detectors are standalone units, But if you have AC powered

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Speaker 1: smoke detectors in your home, and your home has been

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Speaker 1: built in the last ten years or so in the

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Speaker 1: United States, chances are their wired together to intercommunicate. This

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Speaker 1: sort of wiring guarantees that if one alarm in the

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Speaker 1: house goes off, they all go off. Even if the

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Speaker 1: fire starts down in the basement, people asleep upstairs will

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Speaker 1: hear the alarm. Because of this safety feature, every alarm

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Speaker 1: in the house goes off simultaneously. If you buy an

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Speaker 1: a C powered smoke detector today, it will have three wires,

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Speaker 1: black white, and red black excepts volts. A C white

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Speaker 1: is neutral, and red is the intercommunication wire. All of

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Speaker 1: the alarms operate off the same circuit from the fuse

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Speaker 1: box and are normally connected using normal wire. For three

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Speaker 1: ways switches, see the article entitled how three ways switches

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Speaker 1: work on How stuff Works for details. This wiring contains

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Speaker 1: a black, white and a red wire. In a romance casing,

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Speaker 1: the electrician runs the red wire from alarm to alarm

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Speaker 1: to interconnect them. When any alarm detects a fire, it

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Speaker 1: sends a nine volts signal on that red wire. Any

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Speaker 1: alarm that detects a nine volts signal on the red

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Speaker 1: wire will begin sounding its alarm immediately. Most alarms can

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Speaker 1: go about a dozen units intercommunicating on that same red wire.

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Speaker 1: It's a very simple and a very effective system for

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Speaker 1: keeping your home safe. For more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and

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Speaker 1: don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on

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Speaker 1: the house stuff works dot com home page. You can

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Speaker 1: also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain

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