Can anyone tell me what technical problems I might have simply changing over HD' to SD's
ie. Is it a job for a competant handyman, an electrician or a certified fire alarm installer.
Can it be done in small amounts (ie say 3/4 at a time)
Does it have any effect at all on the system installed (non addressable)
I ask because I have so much contrary advise.
Davidrh, technically, the simplest method is to ensure that you choose detectors of the same manufacturer and range, and the job should basically just be a matter of unplugging one and plugging in the other (this is not the case with addressable systems and possibly not with non-addressable detectors of other manufacture or range). Any amount of replacements could be carried out at the same time with due consideration to the impact of having detectors 'missing' from the system at any time.
Also you are talking about HD to SD. It is not so straightforward doing it the other way around.
Also there are different types of SD and it could be argued that one type is better than the other in certain locations, so this might be a consideration.
However the most important part of the project is testing that the new smoke detector is working properly. Since engineers generally only use a smoke aerosol to check the detector generates a fire condition I can't see that this anything particularly difficult for anyone to do.
The final check would be to ensure that removal of the detector from the base generates a 'detector removed' fault at the control panel. Again this is not technically difficult to check!
However, as other posts have alluded to, whoever carried out this work would be legally responsible for doing it. If something went wrong, that person may have to prove in a court of law that they were competent enough to have carried out the work.
n.b. - all of the above advice is totally based on changing a heat detector to a smoke detector whilst retaining the existing mounting base in a non-addressable system.
