How do the pros interconnects these GE350 smokes to all trigeer? Do they use LV wiring? If this is the case how do they get around have the LV wiring and HV wiring in the same box? Perhaps they are using insualted sheathing like the ALC switches.
Trying to figure out what to do with the next house as well.. I belive the building is proposed 110v smokes, but no idea if they are interconnected. If they are all i would need is a single connect from the 'net' to the ELK. I don't particularly care which 'zone' is trigeer. If they go off i will run around like a madman to find the smoke anyway...if i'm fast i'm positive i can check all rooms in the house within 1 minutes. Seems little benefit to monitor individual smokes...
The interconnects is just another wire in the HV bundle...it's 3 wires, black, white, red, and ground. Red is the interconnect.
The plug for the GE smokes combines all of those together, and the wires coming off of the plug don't appear any different for the ones that connect to the LV wires...so I don't know how they got away with that. For my part, i had the LV wire hanging down in every smoke box, and the inspector didn't care. *shrug* different areas, different enfocements, though...
PaulD, you could totally do the one 350CX to monitor all of them, assuming that the 110v ones you're getting are interconnected (which I'd guess by law they have to be). I know many people on the forums have mentioned doing that. One limitation I know of is the 350cx says that the total interconnected smokes can't exceed 10. Maybe that's a common limitation of all smokes, but just be aware.
Unless you house is really really big, it is probably overkill to use all 350CC's....but then, overkill is my HA mantra.
There are a couple nice benefits (though it's a question if they offset the cost). One is that they 350's are just a better overall smoke alarm than I would have gotten stock from the builder. Of course, you can probably get really good smokes and still not pay as much as a 350, so that's kinda moot. Another benefit is that I'll have redundant indication of a fire, because I have all 350CC's and 1 CX....so anywhere the fire is detected, that CC will go off, as well as the CX, so 2 indications. At the same time, with some simple logic, I can still always determine where the problem is (if a CX and CC are going off, it's at the CC. If just the CX, then it's there). Finally, and this is somewhat minor, but there's also the issue of false alarms. Our smokes have only gone off once since we've moved in, and there was never any smoke. Turns out that the wife got the shower too steamed, and when she opened the door, the steam enveloped the smoke and set it off. But if we didn't know which one it was, and thus able to figure it out, then I would have run to every smoke, and still not found any smoke, and then be left wondering.
So ya, it cost a lot more than it would have if I'd only gone with 1 CX....but the way I look at it, someday if one of those things go off at 3am, and I jump out of bed, then it'd be handy to be able to glance at one of the touchscreens to see where the offender is, especially if there's no visible smoke where I am. CQC can handle all the details of waking up the touchscreens, bringing up the floor displays and showing where it is, and even announcing over whole-house which smoke it is.
