It’s 3:00 a.m.
We’re all sound asleep.
Chirp, chirp, chirp!
It’s the smoke detector–the malfunction alarm.
Dog is now trying to enter my head: panting, very upset, not sure what’s going on.
No one slept much after that.
Second time this has happened in the past year. It’s the First Alert “slim” smoke/carbon monoxide alarm with the 10-year battery.
Fool me once....
All joking aside. I have a few kidde ten year smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Lithium battery, sealed units.
I fill the kitchen with smoke a few times a year, and the one above the refrigerator has never went off. None of them have. I press the button and they say their good.?
Im not sure if this behavior is a fault or a feature.
When we bought the current house (10 years ago), code required that we get interconnected smoke detectors installed. The electrician put in a Kidde system, it was fine for 5 or 6 years. Then it started falsing in the middle of the night for no reason at all. After 3 or 4 rounds of that, I said screw it, ripped them all out and replaced them with new from Home Depot (6 detectors, so this was $300+). Still interconnected, still Kidde (so I didn't have to replace the base plates), but new with 10 year integrated batteries.
That was a year ago -- since then I've replaced basically every single one of them, some of them twice. They would just randomly fail with 3 or 4 beep erorr codes (manual just says it means "system failure"). The warranty is useless, they'll send you a replacement if you send them a broken one, but it takes a few weeks in the mean time I've got kids with no smoke detectors in their bedrooms and I'm not having that.
So a couple weeks ago they all went in the garbage again and now we've got Lowe's brand and back to 9 volts.
I was just thinking of asking the same question. Ours are properly ancient.
Google nest protect.
We had the same issue, and a previous home had that whole connected alarm thing and the wires must have been faulty because it would immediately go off when plugged in. The cheap one I bought in store always died or sent false alerts
The Google one is overkill, but it's nice to know that if doggo was home alone while I'm at work, the alarm would send a notification and I could call the fire dept.
In 2023 we installed 6 wirelessly connected 1st Alert smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. The kind that talk and tell you where and what the issue is. They were a pain to set up, but I was more interested in safety than convenience.
One night this past week, at 130am, they all went off. They didn't say anything, just then alarms were blaring. It scared the crap out out of my wife and I. Our cats went bonkers.
I hit the silence button on one, and they all shut off. I thought that there was smoke everywhere, but it was just my sleepy eyes. Once I focused, I could tell there was no smoke. We systematically checked the house and found nothing. Our backup carbon monoxide detectors didn't go off at all.
It scared us to death. We barely slept the rest of the night. I still have no idea what caused it, but has shaken my faith in them.
It also ruined the plans in my head that in the event of an emergency, I'd scoop up both cats, stick them in the spare carrier in our second bedroom and get the berkeley out of the house. In reality, the cats were running around so quickly that we could barely tell where they were, much less catch them. I'm afraid that in the even of a real emergency, I'd have to leave them to their own fate. That was equally upsetting.
As for the detectors? I'm not sure what to do now. My confidence in the existing ones has dropped to almost nothing. Replacements are now selling on Amazon at $68.47 each and I'm not sure if I should push my luck with the old ones, buy new ones, or try something else.
Glad (sorta) to hear that I’m not the only one....
I'm not really sure how old my smoke detectors are. I've been good about replacing the batteries, but based on how yellow-white they are, I'd say it's probably time for an upgrade/replacement.
Check with your power company. We got an "energy audit" from ours and they came and installed a bunch for free. They're rather sensitive, I already tossed the one closest to the kitchen, but free is good.
I have a few that are hard-wired and they are 1000% better. No false alarms, no batteries to replace.
I have the google nest protect ones as well, i did just see an announcement that they are discontinuing making them directly themselves- https://www.theverge.com/news/638171/google-discontinuing-nest-protect-smoke-alarm-nest-x-yale-smart-lock
That being said, if you can, I would 100% buy more of them if I needed to. You get the low battery alerts on your phone, instead of chirping, so much better. Mine have been super rock solid, have a motion detector night light function which is very nice, and overall just can't be beat.
Update: I called First Alert. They asked some easy questions–date on the back of the unit, where purchased and installed, etc.–and, in theory, I have a replacement on the way.
Turns out we had another bad one, too. I forgot that it was in the e-waste box in the garage. They’re replacing that one, too.
Update to the update: Just got a shipping notice.
A friends brother is a retired firefighter and current fire marshal. He previously told me that they are only good for 10 years max. They contain some material that is used up over time ( I've forgotten the details) as part of the comparison or testing they do to identify actual smoke. He said if you pull it off the wall and there is a smudged spot on the wall and/or back of the detector, it has "let the smoke out" and can no longer perform the intended function. He also emphasized that if the smudge is on the wall, you need to clean it off or paint over it so you can tell when the replacement has died.
In reply to secretariata (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah, I can definitely see that a smoke alarm isn’t a forever device. But these two didn’t even give us a year of service. We’ll see how the replacements perform.
I ended up replacing our 20 year old detectors last summer with some 10 year battery Kiddie ones that Aldi had for cheap.
Just got the UPS notice: Replacement smoke detectors estimated to arrive tomorrow.
The dude who built this house had installed a hardwired networked A/C-powered system with battery backup. Not quite 20 years later, I started getting some weird behavior and figured they were used up. Replaced with nearly identical system. Still hardwired and networked. I'm assuming they're Kidde brand, but there's no name visible on the outside of the product.
The idea that new 10-year ones are failing with regularity is disheartening. We need to replace all the ones in our house.
The on in our living room and master bedroom are high up on the wall because of the vaulted ceilings. Probably 15-16 ft up. I can't really get on ladders anymore because I immediately get dizzy, so having one blaring until we could get our handyman out is unlikeable proposition.
In trying to determine what brand mine were, I did notice that I wrote a 2019 install date on the unit. So, in spite of the fact that I thought I did it just a year or two ago, these have been working for almost 6 years.
Well, crap! That means I'll likely need to replace them again in another few years. Argh.
1988RedT2 said:The dude who built this house had installed a hardwired networked A/C-powered system with battery backup. Not quite 20 years later, I started getting some weird behavior and figured they were used up. Replaced with nearly identical system. Still hardwired and networked. I'm assuming they're Kidde brand, but there's no name visible on the outside of the product.
I think the hardwired aspect is a residential building code requirement. The newest (most recently constructed) home I've owned was built in 1998 and it had a hardwired and linked system with batteries as the backup. That builder would not have spent the money on wiring if it wasn't mandated by code.
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