Kidde Fire Alarm (new 10 year one) keeps going off and wont turn off.

Driving my wife nuts, I installed it about a year ago and it is suposed to last 10 years but it started going off about noon and will not shut off. After an hour my wife called me telling em she was going to take drastic measures. About 10 min ago I got a call telling me that it has been removed from the ceiling and is no long an problem.

Anyway these things are supposed to last 10 years this thing is only a year old what gives? Asuming it is still in once piece and she did not run it over with her H2 any ideas as to the fix? These things are sealed units so i don't think I can take the battery out of it and I don't think I can even take it apart to clean it.

I will be really annoyed if I have to replace it as it was not cheep compared to the ones with the 1 year battery in them that you replace. Maybe I should bring it in to Lowes where I got it with it going off and see if they will replace it.

Did you ask her if the house was on fire? Sometimes my wife wouldn't think to check.

"Hello, Kidde?"

There may be a bugs, a spider or some other foreign object in it.

I used to have real problems with a unit out in the garage, needing to blow the dead bugs and stuff out of it every three weeks or so.

Got much better after I disassembled it a bit (not intended for disassembly) and black out/foiled over the LED that was always on, attracting insects. Frequency of nuisance alarms now much reduced.

This would really be for the rant thread, but why do these things seem to only malfunction sometime between 2 and 3 am?

Someone donated a few cases of of those things to the fire department and we handed them out to people who didn't have any detectors in their homes. They had the 10 year, non replaceable battery. About six months later, we started getting phone calls for false alarms. It also happened to the one that I installed in my office at the firehouse, which, oddly enough, did not have a smoke detector in it.

I don't really know why these are so bad. They must have gotten a batch of bad batteries from a supplier. I am surprised because Kidde-Nighthawk Carbon Monoxide detectors are very good.

Teach the children the arson is wrong.

So I get home and as I walk by my Porsche I notice that it is beeping. Figuring I probably should make the second thing I investigate I go inside. Wife is happy as she "solved the problem".

I go out and see what is with this thing. Sure enough it will not turn off or reset. It was not a low battery it was alarming. I tried blowing it out with compressed air but that did not help. I figured the best course of action was to put it back in the Porsche and deal with this in the AM. Ohya and I pulled out the old one from the basement where I put it and plugged in a new battery and it is working perfectly. I now have a year to figure this out now. I am liking old technology at the moment.

Wall-e wrote: Did you ask her if the house was on fire? Sometimes my wife wouldn't think to check.

Well I did ask her if she had been cooking.

High humidity can set them off too. Is one by a bathroom that steams up with hot showers?

dean1484 wrote: Maybe I should bring it in to Lowes where I got it with it going off and see if they will replace it.

If you've got the receipt, or gave them your phone number when you bought it/them, I sure would. Wouldn't bother with fiddling with it, which can void the warranty.

crankwalk wrote: High humidity can set them off too. Is one by a bathroom that steams up with hot showers?

Is this typical of smoke detectors? There is one right outside one of the bathrooms at the in laws and if you forget to close the bathroom door after taking a shower, it sets off the alarm, every single freakin time.

I get more angry about it than i should.

I was picturing your wife going to the Drawer of Jeremy to select an appropriate tool:

if they are like the detectors we have at work, they use "density" to go off. If the air is "dense" with particles, it trips them.. hence why a really hot shower can set them off

failboat wrote:

crankwalk wrote: High humidity can set them off too. Is one by a bathroom that steams up with hot showers?

Is this typical of smoke detectors? There is one right outside one of the bathrooms at the in laws and if you forget to close the bathroom door after taking a shower, it sets off the alarm, every single freakin time. I get more angry about it than i should.

Yes, high humidity (steam) is really close to smoke and a lot of them can't tell them apart.

Stupid question but has the battery been replaced yet?

92dxman wrote: Stupid question but has the battery been replaced yet?

It is not replaceable.

Obviously the answer is... shotgun.

crankwalk wrote:

failboat wrote:

crankwalk wrote: High humidity can set them off too. Is one by a bathroom that steams up with hot showers?

Is this typical of smoke detectors? There is one right outside one of the bathrooms at the in laws and if you forget to close the bathroom door after taking a shower, it sets off the alarm, every single freakin time. I get more angry about it than i should.

Yes, high humidity (steam) is really close to smoke and a lot of them can't tell them apart.

That's very common, even with commercial grade units.

You would be shocked and appalled at the percentage of my working hours dedicated to dead batteries in smoke/CO detectors. Also at the absolute lack of knowledge that people have about the things that they buy and put in their homes.

Nutshell: If it's chirping, your alarm is not going off. Learn how to replace a battery. If it's screaming, call us.

If your alarm has a digital readout, it doesn't say "L6", it's "Lb" for "Low Battery". Beep patterns and messages are usually explained right on the back of the detector.

It's also worth noting that most current generation carbon monoxide detectors self destruct about seven years after they are first activated, and no new battery is going to clear the error message. The date of manufacture should be listed on the back of the detector, but I don't think that the clock starts ticking until the unit is installed for the first time.

XLR99 wrote: I was picturing your wife going to the Drawer of Jeremy to select an appropriate tool:

This was very seriously considered (I was told as much over dinner) but my hammers are in the shed at the moment as I was working on something out there and did not bring the box of tools in. There for she could not find them.

So this morning I am greated by a beeping freezer. Yep it went off again and that was the solution.

This time I popped the thing apart and took a blow gun to the sensor and all kinds of dust and debris came out. Back together and so far so good.