I was about to link to the same video. From what I remember though both types have strength and weaknesses in regards to the type of fire.

Edit: watched it again so ionization smoke detectors are better at detecting active fire, although his conclusion is that the benefit is not as big and overall photoelectric ones are better.

This is plain WRONG and DANGEROUS.

The issue is NOT the Americum but the natural degration of the photoelectric cells and the accumulation of dirt within the test chamber.

Even before that time the risk for false alarms is increased substantially by degration before the chances for sucessful alarming decrease rapidly. Due to that they actually withstand aging actually worse than ionisation based devices.

Sientific sources?

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(Besides: Americum has a decay time of over 400 years,btw)

According to the one i just had to replace, combo carbon monoxide detectors need to be replaced. I don't know how the carbon monoxide part works, but i wonder if it's a reagent or something.

This is anecdotical but I moved into an apartment with a 30 year old ionizing smoke detector, and the failure was it was too sensitive, I assume because there were less electrons being emitted from the radioactive element, any faint smoke caused it to go off. Eventually it got into a state where it would always be in an alert state, and was beeping 100% of the time, which was when the landlord finally replaced it.

My assumption with the 10 year replacement recommendation for Americium based smoke detectors is to replace it before it becomes too sensitive and annoying, because they were worried some people would remove the battery and just live without an active smoke detector.

Alec in his own video mentions that the issue isn't that the Americium decays, but that the electronics themselves age and fail, which applies to both the ionization detectors and photoelectric detectors.

This is one of the things you just don't wanna mess with, as such a failure is completely unpredictable, and from what I know some manufacturers are even beginning to make detector units with non-replaceable batteries, intended to be replaced whole when the battery dies after years of runtime, to make it impossible to keep using a detector after its rated lifetime.

The half life for americium 241 is like 450 years. The 10 year replacement has nothing to do with decay. It's just a non specific safety in case any of the electronics or board etc start to fail. Photoelectric detectors have the same 10 year recommendation as a max.

It's actually recommend by many organizations (like the NFPA) to replace photoelectric detectors more often than ionization detectors, if anything.

That's a reasonable reaction to the current state of things.

But are you fine with dying from burning or smoking inhalation?

Possibly a difference in construction materials. Most stuff in the US is made of wood and other flammable materials. From what I understand, brick/stone based materials are the most common in European buildings.

If you are asleep and your house catches fire, the idea is that the smoke detector will wake you up with enough time hopefully to escape the fire. That is really their primary purpose.

Some European countries do require them. Germany and Britain require smoke detectors in all residential buildings, for example.

Detect fires, save lives.

I work in EMS. When we respond to house fires in the middle of the night there's kind of two different ways they go. When people have smoke detectors and their house catches on fire in the middle of the night they're the ones who call us and we get on scene to find them outside their home in their pajamas, watching their house burn, very shaken up but ok. They never need anything from us ambulance-wise except maybe some blankets. When people don't have smoke detectors in their homes and they catch on fire in the middle of the night a neighbor or passer-by calls the fire in and we get on scene and the firefighters are dragging bodies out to us.

The closest detector to the kitchen was in a bed room.

There had been a different detector in the living room but had gotten knocked down a while ago and broke (and never replaced), it was not on the interlink system, and when the other detectors would go off while cooking the one in the living room would not.

As you can see from my image, the detectors I replaced were from 2005, and needed replacing for quite some time.

The ones we have installed respond to IR signals from your TV remote. It doesn't matter what button you use on the remote, just point the remote at the smoke alarm and it will turn off

I'd say stupid. I live in a country where most houses are brick walls + concrete floors, and smoke detectors are still common + since a few years also mandated by the government.

The government mandate came after it was found that of the dozens of people that died every year from house fires, 95% suffocated in their sleep.

Some numbers for my region: ~7m population, 70% of houses had smoke detection before the mandate, on average 63 died per year from house fires.

Some incorrect approximative math: Lets assume that the amount of dead could have been halved if those 30% houses had 2 smoke detectors per person (lets say 2 cheap ones for 2x20 euros per 10 years): 7m x 0.3 x 2 x 20€ /10 /63 x2 = a cost of 267€ per year per life saved. Imo that's a no brainer, it'd be stupid to not invest in smoke detection.

Other countries use less flammable materials in their construction. Wood frame construction is very common in the US due to drastically lower cost of wood vs block. We also had something called balloon frame construction for many years which made it much more likely for fire to travel within the walls. That being said not having detectors isn't a great idea either since most are combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.