Closing up our Florida condo for summer last week. Came home from dinner out and all five smoke detectors were beeping like crazy. No smoke, no grilling nearby. Fire department came, found no danger, shut off current at outside box. Occasional beep all night, but we had to leave in the morning before solving the problem.
Condo management has a contract with a local alarm company, monthly tagged inspections and all. Company claims the problem is internal to our unit, requires internal service by an electrician.
I am ready to bite the bullet on this one, but I would like to have some guesses as to what went wrong so I can talk intelligently with an electrician long distance. These detectors are hardwired with battery backups. Eight unit building but a problem only with our place. Detectors operate even when the main circuit breaker in our unit is tripped. I don’t understand how these are wired and am wondering if we would be as well off tying off the hard wiring and going with batteries only. Hoping to learn something from those more knowledgeable than I am.
Replies
These are probably wired so that if one goes off, they all go off. What you have more than likely is that one detector is defective and setting the horns off in the others as it should.
Finding the bad one could be easy or not, but one by one, you unhook the signal wire that goes to the other detectors, or maybe just removing them all and add them back one at a time will show you which one is bad.
Before you disconnect the a/c power, check to see if it is required in your area.
"Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
If they are older detectors, dust or a spiders web inside the detector may actually cause the optical sensor to trip.
Gstringe is correct that they are interconnected and only 1 of them is initiating the alarm signal.
You shouldn't need to disconnect the signal wire as another person posted, because the one initiating the alarm will have a different LED blinking pattern than the other 4.
So your electrician can just walk around and look at all of them while the alarm is sounding and identify the offending detector, then deal with it.
Dust is often a cause of false alarms. The detectors can be lightly vacuumed.
Ed
"You shouldn't need to disconnect the signal wire as another person posted, because the one initiating the alarm will have a different LED blinking pattern than the other 4."I don't think that all of them, at least the older ones have that feature..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
I have had this happen in apartments and the cause has been a bad battery. I have also learned that a new battery is not necessarily good. Smoke detectors have their own battery tester and will beep if a battery is low. I would replace the batteries with some fresh ones. They also take a while to reset when the batteries are replaced.