Safety Siren Pro Series3 Radon Gas Detector - HS71512 by Family Safety Products, Inc.

Safety Siren Pro Series3 Radon Gas Detector - HS71512 by Family Safety Products, Inc...

Grab Now Safety Siren Pro Series3 Radon Gas Detector - HS71512 by Family Safety Products, Inc. By Family Safety Products, Inc

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206 of 210 people found the following review helpful.
Believe it really works
By Stud
The documentation I got with my house showed a radon reading above 50.0 before a mitigation system was installed and < 4.0 after it was installed.
The radon mitigation fan broke and I falsely thought painting / sealing the basement floor (years ago) would stop the radon.
After plugging in this unit I got a reading (after a few days) around 10.0 and it went up day by day. I replaced the mitigation fan when the reading was around 20.0. This unit then showed the level go down each day (took about 2 weeks to get to safe level).
Highly recommend this considering you can spend $15.00 a pop on those radon testers you mail in. One I used said I had a safe level.

88 of 95 people found the following review helpful.
Works as expected, but documentation could be better
By A. Dulin
I bought this gizmo a few weeks ago to monitor the basement in our new house and see if it is usable as an entertainment/gym area. In the summer when we did the radon test the result came in at 2.4 . When I first turned on this device the result came in at 8.4 !!

That made me freak out a bit, but after re-reading the instruction I realized that placing the detector 2 feet away from the sump hole may not be the right thing to do. So, I moved it closer to the middle of the basement and reset it. After a couple of days the reading came in at 4.6 .

During heavy rains the device showed readings of as high as 5.9 and it went down to 4.2 during dry weather.

Before taking any drastic measures I decided to first do some common sense maintenance tasks on the basement to at least prevent radon from entering the living area upstairs. I taped up all the cracks in the HVAC ductwork that I could find. The radon reading slowly creeped up to 4.6 due to reduced ventilation of the basement, but at least none of it was going upstairs.

I called our house inspector who did the test and he pointed out that when we inspected the house there were storage cabinets over the sump hole and along the walls, covering up the "mother earth." So I placed a piece of rubber tile over the sump hole and the reading when down to 3.2 in a couple of days.

So, what's the moral of this story ? While I can't vouch for precision of this device I learned the following:

- You need to leave it on for at least a month before you get an accurate reading.
- There is no need to freak out over "mildly" high readings. First, the device is not that accurate. Professional continuous testing devices cost thousands. So, don't take what it says as an absolute measure. Trust, but verify. Second, the US EPA requires mitigation at 4.0 -- but based on my research European agencies require mitigation at 7.0 and in some parts of Canada as high as 20.0 .
- If the reading is mildly high, say between 4 and 6 like it was in my case, then common sense maintenance tasks may take care of the problem. For example, covering up the sump hole with a piece of rubber tile helped bring the reading down to under 4.0 for us.

What radon mitigation people don't tell you is that you can cut your radiation exposure in half just by circulating the air in your basement. Moving the air around encourages the plate-out (settlement) of charged daughter particles of radon decay. It doesn't reduce the radon itself, but it encourages the actual dangerous stuff to stick to the walls and furniture instead of your lungs. The decay of the daughter particles is measured in minutes, and not even days. There is a guy who patented a ceiling fan as a means of mitigating radon. So, the point is -- mild increases in radon levels can be mitigated cheaply, if not for free.

To conclude, I find this device useful in general as a tool for measuring earth gases entering the basement. Besides radon there is a lot more harmful stuff that may be seeping in that you need to worry about. Ground water carries all sorts of disgusting stuff and in some areas of the country mildly high radon levels are the least of your worries (think arsenic, mercury, MTBE, etc.) So, if the Safety Siren is telling you you have mildly high radon readings it probably means you have mildly high levels of all sorts of other disgusting crap in your basement. Common sense methods of circulating the air, covering up the exposure to dirt, etc. is enough to control the problem.

UPDATE 3/4/09: I realized that I had the device's power supply right next to it. Moving it away from the unit lowered the radon reading by at least 1.0-2.0 pCi/L . It is now consistently below 4.0 . This is a finicky little gadget. I wouldn't rely on it as the source of all truth about radon. TRUST BUT VERIFY.

120 of 133 people found the following review helpful.
Great product helped me and colleague reduce lifetime lung cancer risk
By Swiss-American Boy
Though the interface is a bit clunky the device really works great!
I would never again bother with those mail-in radon detectors again -- save to validate the machine -- as our device's values were shown to be the same. But, unlike those mail-in cans the results are delivered within the two days (the device needs that amount of time to calculate a moving average) instead of a month.
Thanks to the device I was warned of a 4.5 pico curie level in my basement. After having a radon mitigation system installed, the device showed the level dropping to 1.6.
A friend of mine, more out of curiosity, asked to borrow the device. He put it in his basement expecting nothing much. A few days later he heard a fire-alarm like siren coming from the basement. He'd forgotten about the detector. When he finally realized it was the radon detector he was shocked to find his basement had a radon level of 13! Now, he too has a radon mitigation system and the levels have dropped to around 1.0.
We calculated that we reduced our families' lung cancer mortality rates by multiples -- especially for my son whose lungs are more sensitive.

"...Mortality rate is usually expressed as deaths/100 over a lifetime of exposure (70 years 75% of the time). Does not tell you when the deaths occurred, just an estimate of how many.

4 pci/liter: 3% average mortality (e.g. 3 out of 100 people expected to die of lung cancer)
15 pci/liter: 10% average
20 pci/liter: 15% average mortality
200 pci/liter: 50% average mortality

Houses with upwards of 2000 pci/liter have been measured! Even these can be dangerous in the short term (10 years or less). Although these mortality rates seem very high, they are similar with those for things we accept as part of our everyday lives.

10 pci/liter is roughly equivalent to the risk of smoking 1/2-1 pack of cigarettes/day or having 500 chest x-rays/year.

Can also express risk as a loss of life expectancy. Tells you, how much something shortens the average (not your) life expectancy. Doesn't say when any individual will die. 15 pci/liter lowers the average life expectancy by one year (10% mortality). Smoking a pack a day reduces it by 6 years. Being 25 pounds overweight reduces it by 2 years. Automobile accidents reduce it by 2/3 years. Home and work accidents reduce it by about 100 days...."
-- GEO113 Radon Lecture Notes

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Cobra XRS9370 High-Performance Radar/Laser Detector with 360-Degree Protection

Cobra XRS9370 High-Performance Radar/Laser Detector with 360-Degree Protection..

Special Price Cobra XRS9370 High-Performance Radar/Laser Detector with 360-Degree Protection By Cobra

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348 of 363 people found the following review helpful.
Decent Protection For The Price..
By Ambergris
I received this new Cobra 9370 radar detector a little over a week ago. I own another one that is a little cheaper than this that also does a good job. But this Cobra model is not only more sensitive and brings the driver a better alert earlier from any direction, but it is also loaded with features that can be tailored made to any kind of area or terrain. At first I was a little intimidated by all the functions and features of this model. There is really is not much more one could ask for options on a radar detector. However thanks to a well laid out instruction booklet and a user friendly button system, it took me really no time at all to customize this baby for whatever driving situation I was in.

I tested this unit both in my town here and on the highway for several days. This being the Fall season the police around here are not all that diligent in the stationary radar on the side of the road, but I did run into some. In each instance the distance between my being received effectively by the patrol car and my being signaled by the detector of his presence was excellent. So far in advance as a matter of fact that each time I silenced the audio part of the alarm just because it went on so long. (It has both audible and visual detection options on it, among many other settings. You can set it to auto mute if you like). One kind of radar detection device that is always in vogue however is the so called rolling radar on the police cars themselves, and the new laser units. No matter where I was, I was alerted each and every time a cop was in the area from any direction, without fail. Not one time while this detector was active was I surprised by a police cars appearance. Which of course has the added advantage of saving you from a lot more infractions than just the cost of a speeding ticket. And pretty much gone are the days when garage door openers and automatic doors on store fronts had you hitting the break pedal way too often. The sensitivity adjustment on this seems to take care of false alerts in a city or congested environment where we tend not to speed anyway. It wasn't altogether foolproof. A few motion detectors and such did have it emitting a false alarm here and there. But I have always found it easy to differentiate between an alert being genuine radar, and just a door opening somewhere. The alert when its radar is loud, steady and unbroken in most cases. False alarms are frequently intermittent and last only for a second or two. In any event I was very pleased with it's performance in that respect. And it is also my opinion that this detector performed better than satisfactory in the majority of tests in city and country areas that I was able to throw at it. About the only thing I can say I didn't like about this model isn't really about the detector at all, but with its included dash mount, which is really nothing more than a thick piece of velcro. You have a choice of mounting this unit either on an included suction cup attachment for the windshield, or on the dash with the velcro strip. The windshield mount is the way to go for it to be secure for sure. It sticks firmly to the glass and the detector can be detached from the mount with just a click of a button. Not only do you need a perfectly flat surface on your dash for the other mount to be secure, (rare these days on most modern cars) but even on a flat dash it's not all that supportive. Go with the windshield mount for sure.

In conclusion, I have owned a variety of radar detectors over the years. Starting way back when they used to be available in a kit that you put together yourself, (and never seem to work no matter how well you did the job). This latest Cobra model has to easily be one of the best and most accurate for the price, with a variety of features to suit anyone, of any I have used. There are more expensive radar detectors to be sure. And in the interest of fairness I have to admit I have never owned a really high priced model. But given the performance of this Cobra 9370, I would imagine that the only person that would need something any better than this is someone really bent on breaking the speed laws at their leisure. For the average driving Joe ,I highly recommend this super Cobra 9370. Very good performance and features at a really fair price...

129 of 147 people found the following review helpful.
Bad reviewers tend to not read instructions ... great detector.
By Rahul P. Mehta
The Cobra XRS-9570 is, in fact, a great radar detector that doesn't break the wallet. I don't know what's wrong with many of the folks who give terrible reviews of these things but clearly they probably didn't read the instructions. This is a RADAR DETECTOR, thus, it needs a clear, level line of site (although I've seen some nice Valentine's that don't need to be level to work phenomenally, ie. motorcycle on-dash ones). The range of this Cobra series works really well. I've had maybe 1-2 false alarms in the past 2 months of using this due to X alerts from automatic doors on businesses located just off the highway. Other than that, I've seen nothing but great results. Over hills, from a distance, and 360 degrees ... I am very impressed with this radar detector. In fact I was alerted to a Ka just over a hill and sure enough, there was a sly officer hanging out in a great spot (of course I wasn't speeding so I didn't worry... heh). I have mine mounted towards the bottom of my front windshield. It is just above the wiper blades and has a line of site out the rear of the vehicle just above the back seats of my SUV (Honda CR-V).

Furthermore, this radar detector comes with 1-press mute button, and is able to be programmable to shut down during low-RPM movement which is a headache-saver during slow traffic in the city.

The only problem I had was with the mounting/suction cups. However, I installed these in the middle of winter so I had to use warm water on the cups to make them more bendable. Once they weren't basically frozen, they attached to the windshield just fine. The metal bracket that holds the radar detector works very well and is sturdy (the detector doesn't shake much when driving over bumpy roads). I do suggest to take OFF the detector to bend the bracket if it isn't level (this is also in the instructions... it's super easy).

So, in conclusion I highly recommend the Cobra XRS-9570. It isn't ungodly expensive, its range is great, and the adjustabilities (volume, detection, speed-shut down), make this a great detector. Please don't listen to the person who haphazardly gave this a 0 star review with terrible grammar. Read the easy instructions that come with this detector and you'll very much like it.

59 of 70 people found the following review helpful.
The perfect balance
By Amazon Customer
It has an smart volunme feature on it that automatically reduces the volume.

It detects police officers running radar with PLENTY of warning time.

It has very few alerts and I have never looked back.

I was in the market for an Escort 9500 radar detector, but Amazon sold out.

I figured I would give this unit a try.

Day one: Multiple alerts recieved but the screen didn't work at all
Day two: Still no screen function
Day three: DERP! Theres a SOLID BLACK sticker on the screen. I never thought to look for a screen cover. Haha.

Day four: Every alert (I drive about 40 highway miles) either preceeded or popped on as a cop came up behind me. I always had about 30 seconds to react. Plenty of time to let off the accelerator.

Fair warning: A police officer can STILL drift clock you from behind (Pacing your car and reading THEIR speedometer, this is legal in several states).
((This happened to me. Darn you Tx DPS- but I did get a warning).

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