Check age of detectors, back up battery, and give it a shot of clean air. Our smoke detectors were well beyond 10 years and slowly went one by one. Great during the day, but not at night with the kids!
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Smoke alarms randomly going off in house
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Originally posted by flywise View PostI go on detector calls ALL the time. Most of the time it’s 2am.
So, check the manufacturer date. Most have a life span of 10 years
Next vacuum or blow compressed air onto the sensor.
Replace the batteries.
If over or around 10 years old replace all of them
And most of the time there will be one fairly close to the return air intake which means dust is constantly passing by the unit.....it will go bad before all the others.
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Good thread. The last house we lived in had the hard-wired detectors with the 9V back-up battery. It seemed like a never ending battle and of course, when one of those darn things went off, it would be at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. Within 6 months of moving in, I went through and replaced all back-up batteries. Perhaps as another poster stated, some of the new batteries were not good. Seems like I replaced all batteries 2X per year over the next few years just to keep any detectors from chirping. This house was new construction, so the detectors were not out of date either.
Then we moved to another house that we completely gutted out and remodeled. I swore off those hardwired detectors after prior experience; although, we needed to have at least one hardwired to pass current code. Regardless, I bought a handful of the sealed, wireless detectors that have an approximate 10 year life. After 1.5 years, I've already had to replace one of them.
Based on responses in this thread, at least I'm not the only one that's had some bad luck with smoke detectors.
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Great info guys. Thanks!
Sounds like I need to change the main backup battery out as well as get on to my wife for not properly dusting the sensors.
These alarms beep if a 9volt is low so I don’t think it’s that.
The house is 9 years old. I didn’t realize they only had a 10 year life. I’ll check that as well.
I don’t think carbon monoxide is an issue as it’s all electric. We don’t have natural gas to the house.
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Was helping a older lady at church with a door issue in her house and noticed the alarm panel was chirping. She is really hard of hearing and couldn't hear it. I checked the smoke detectors, and one had 2 CR123 batts that had been in 10 months. The other used 3 AAA batts and I had never seen that before. Then when I looked closely at the AAAs, they were in backwards. Replaced the CR123s and the AAAs and problem went away. Made a note in my phone to replace the batts in 6 months.
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Just another heads up, a couple of years ago when I changed out our original smoke detectors that were about 15 years old I found that I could get the same brand/size with a 10 year lithium battery in it. Now I do not have to worry about changing the 9 volts once or twice each year and that actually offsets the increased cost of the lithium model over the expected 10 year life. 9 volt batteries are not cheap...
Prevents the 2AM chirp too.
Tim
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