Fire Research Division

Home Smoke Alarm Tests

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Overview

While there is no question that smoke alarms have successfully prevented thousands of residential fire deaths, their beneficial effect may be beginning to plateau. It is recognized that reducing the number of non-working alarms may produce some further reduction in fire deaths. Further, introducing more effective alarms in residential dwellings could have a greater impact in reducing deaths. However, there seems to be little incentive to produce and install better residential fire alarms until performance improvements can be demonstrated through objective, realistic, and accurate testing.

In co-operation with the United States Fire Administration (USFA), other sponsors, and U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), NIST has conducted an evaluation of current and emerging smoke alarm technology responses to common residential fire scenarios and nuisance alarm sources. The research was performed at by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), under the general guidance of a steering committee of the sponsoring organizations.

Final Project Report

The results of the project provide details of the response of a range of residential smoke alarm technologies in a controlled laboratory test and in a series of real-scale tests conducted in two different residential structures. These are intended to provide both insight into siting and response characteristics of residential smoke alarms and a set of reference data for future enhancements to alarm technology based on fires from current materials and constructions. Several areas of focus were included in the project:

• Evaluate the performance of current smoke-alarm technology.
• Test conditions representative of current fatal residential fires.
• Evaluate the efficacy of current requirements for number and location of smoke alarms.
• Develop standard nuisance alarm sources to be included in the test program.
• Examine other fire detection technologies in combination with smoke alarms (example: residential sprinkler and heat detectors).
• Obtain data on the potential for improvements in performance by new technologies.
• Include fuel items that incorporate materials and constructions representative of current residential furnishings.
• Fully characterize test detectors and alarms in a consistent manner to facilitate comparisons.
• Utilize fire models to extend the applicability of the test arrangements and maximize the test instrumentation.
• Make all of the data collected as widely accessible as possible.
• Provide opportunities to enhance public fire safety education.

Smoke alarms of either the ionization type or the photoelectric type consistently provided time for occupants to escape from most residential fires, although in some cases the escape time provided can be short. Consistent with prior findings, ionization type alarms provided somewhat better response to flaming fires than photoelectric alarms, and photoelectric alarms provide (often) considerably faster response to smoldering fires than ionization type alarms.

Escape times in this study were systematically shorter than those found in a similar study conducted in the 1970's. This is related to some combination of faster fire development times for today's products that provide the main fuel sources for fires, such as upholstered furniture and mattresses, different criteria for time to untenable conditions, and improved understanding of the speed and range of threats to tenability.

The final report, executive summary, and table of contents are available. Table 27 on page 240 of the report has been changed to reflect a correction of a rounding error and to add a footnote for the best-case scenario; the corrected table is available. All of the documents are in pdf format, requiring Adobe Acrobat Reader to access the files. To install Adobe Acrobat Reader, click here.  (Posted July 2004).

Test Data

• Data from the manufactured home tests are available as NIST Report of Test FR 4016. (Posted October 2001)
• Data from the two-story home tests are available as NIST Report of Test FR 4017. (Posted May 2002)
• Data from nuisance alarm tests are available as NIST Report of Test FR 4019. (Posted November 2003)
• Data from alarm calibrations are available as NIST Report of Test FR 4020. (Posted November 2003)

Project Sponsors

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, www.cpsc.gov 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov 
U.S. Fire Administration, www.usfa.fema.gov 
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Healthy Homes Initiative, www.hud.gov 
Underwriters Laboratories, www.ul.com 
National Fire Protection Association, www.nfpa.org (In-kind contribution)
National Research Council Canada, scitech.gc.ca/  (In-kind contribution)

For further information, contact Richard W. Bukowski, richard.bukowski@nist.gov, (301) 975-6853, fax: (301) 975-4052

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