hard wired smokes

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boyle78

boyle78

Senior Member
Location
new hampshire
I installed some smoke detectors at a home recently. The H.O. has noticed that when he uses his tig welder the smokes start beeping. I assumed that some fumes were getting blown into the basement or whatever, but it was not the case. With the feed off to the smokes (relying on the battery backup) the HO started welding again, and the smokes didn't make a sound. I contacted First Alert and according to them voltage fluxuations will most certainly cause the smokes to go into trouble. In fact, they said that alot of calls have been made from generators doing the same thing. So, either the HO shuts his smokes off each time he welds, or I find a brand that isn't so sensitive to power flux. Any ideas??
I am also wiring this H.O.'s garage and wanted to install heat dets in that....but if a welder causes a problem in the house, I'm affraid that the garage will be twice as bad.
 
I have not placed a recorder or taken meter readings yet....but I was hoping that with the welder being a large load on the phase feeding the smokes,there may be some connection.....add that to the manufacturer's comments and I was hoping to be on the right track. Someone mentioned frequency fluxuation from the welder also maybe affecting the smokes?
 
boyle78 said:
I have not placed a recorder or taken meter readings yet....but I was hoping that with the welder being a large load on the phase feeding the smokes,there may be some connection.....add that to the manufacturer's comments and I was hoping to be on the right track. Someone mentioned frequency fluxuation from the welder also maybe affecting the smokes?
Click to expand...

With guess work, anything's possible.

Are the conductors feeding the welder large enough for the load, including provisions for voltage drop?
 
I know from experience that some 120vac smoke alarms won't run on ac from a power inverter. I was trying to run some overhead lighting in a vacant house while I was painting. I back feed my inverter from my truck into one of the outlets. I had the main turned off just in case someone decided to cut the service back on while I was doing this.

The square wave must have been a problem for the smoke alarms. They didn?t go into alarm, but they did get hot and I could smell an electronic burn.

Maybe the welder is doing something weird to the 60 cycles.
 
K8MHZ said:
With guess work, anything's possible.

Are the conductors feeding the welder large enough for the load, including provisions for voltage drop?
Click to expand...

conductors are #6 copper to a 50a recept not 12" from the panel. The H.O. was using a 25' cord to run the welder power outside though.
 
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