I live in FL. No basement(crawl space under the house), no furnace, all electric house, so I only have smoke detectors in the main building. However, I DO have one in the garage apartment, as that's where we would stay if we lost power and had to run the generator. I have a "tent" (open on the sides) to cover it outside in the yard, but still worry about the exhaust, as it has to be close enough to the building to run an extension cord.