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You are here: Experts > Parenting/Family > Protecting your Home and Family > Security & Fire Protection Systems > FireX5000 Smoke Alarms Random Chirping
Expert: Fred P. Wessells - 10/27/2009
Question
QUESTION: My husband and I purchased our home 13 years ago. The builder installed seven interconnected hardwired Firex smoke detectors in the two-story house.
We started experiencing random chirping in the middle of the night, which has been driving me crazy. Last week,I purchased all new Firex 500 alarms and installed them, and to my extreme disappointment, the chirping still happens. I haven't even paid my charge card bill for the alarms yet, and I already want to rip them out!
What's really making me crazy is that the chirping only happens throughout the night, (from 12 p.m. until around 6 a.m.) and it wakes me up. My husband is a snoring sleeper, and he doesn't hear any chirping at night. Since the chirping doesn't happen during the day or early evening when he's home, he thinks I'm "hearing things," but he's cooperating in helping me figure out what's going on.
I can't pinpoint which alarm the chirp is coming from because they seem to be taking turns chirping (at least once every hour). I've often been jolted awake by the sound of the loud chirp. I have to admit I'm a light sleeper, and sometimes I'm already awake for one reason or another, but as I'm trying to go back to sleep, I'll hear a chirp coming from one of the rooms, and then I'll hear another chirp from another room. I have followed the trouble shooting instructions on the www.kidde.com website, which included removing all of the batteries and holding the test buttons down to "reset" the alarms, but the chirping continues. I also tried to call the Kidde customer service and main office numbers that are listed on their website, but no one answers the phone.
After several more of my sleepless nights, and after listening to me being grumpy from lack of sleep, a couple of nights ago, my husband removed two of the smoke detectors in the upstairs and downstairs hallways to see that would happen, and I was still awakened by a loud chirp in the bedroom that night. Yesterday, he removed the one in the bedroom, and last night I was finally able to get some sleep. I'm assuming I was either too exhausted to hear any chirps, or the remaining smoke detectors didn't feel like chirping last night.
Today, I was planning to find an electrician to call to come out to check the electrical wiring, but I'm afraid the guy is going to think I'm crazy or maybe that I'm just hearing things. I decided to wait and try to contact Kidde/Firex to see if they could offer some suggestions before I spent more money on this project. Since they aren't answering the phone (which is very frustrating) I decided to explore the Internet to see if I could find more answers. The Kidde website has a page about random intermittent chirping, and it says that a loose white neutral wire can cause an echoing chirp. I'm not sure what an echoing chirp is. The smoke detectors seem to take turns chirping, but not right after the other like an echo would be. The website also says that environmental temperature conditions and electrical power conditions could be causing the problem. There are so many factors, that I'm afraid it's going to cost a fortune for an electrician to come out to our house and take the time to figure out what's going on.
I would appreciate any help you could give me to help me troubleshoot the chirping smoke detectors. I apologize for such a long message.
Sincerely
Jane
ANSWER: Dear Sleepless,
The very first thing you must do is contact your local municipality and find out if their code requires hardwired detectors. It probably does, but you might be surprised. That said, if it does, after you're through grumbling and mumbling about how these things never work, consider the following:
1. I am frustrated by how these types of alarms are continually more and more being required. They are incredibly unreliable because of the type of problem you are seeing. A hardwired detector can be set off (besides smoke or fire or CO) by a power spike, power surge, brownout, blackout and the phases of the moon...oh, and as well as a dying back-up battery. It's very frustrating. And every time that happens, it will chirp. If you aren't home during the day, then you might not realize it, but nighttime always seems to be the favorite time.
2. If hardwired alarms are required, your builder should have hooked them up to one circuit. That they are 13 years old is another strong possibility of what's wrong. They may just flatout be worn out and need to be replaced. They only last long enough to drive you to the brink of insanity.
There are a few things you can do...besides trying to call Kidde. (By the by, they happen to be a very good company, and why they are not responding to you is beyond me. Next time you call, tell them you have a friend who works for Security Tech & Design Magazine (now Security Executive), and he said to call them because they were very reliable. THAT might shame them into calling. (I was their founding managing editor, but left some years back so don't still have my list of contacts...but it still might prompt them to do something.) If they ask who, tell them Steve Lasky...he's still the publisher, and everyone in the industry knows him.)
Once you determine if you do need hardwired alarms, then I really would talk with Kidde. They make money from service as well as installation.
After that, you can do a few things. First, you can turn the power circuit to the detectors completely off. (I hope your electrician had the decency to label the circuits; mine didn't.) Process of elimination will find them at least, if not labeled. Once the power is off, then I would take them down one at a time and check the wiring to ensure it's tight, no loose wires, no unconnected wires, etc. You can do this. It's just a simple check. Take it down, look at the wire connections, put them back up. Connect a wire or tighten the screw if one has come loose. Yes, that's a lot of work in a house your size. (I have one combo CO/smoke detector and one regular smoke detector, battery operated, that work just fine.) But it will resolve that problem.
If indeed you find that there are any problems, fix those and see what happens. My guess is that you will find nothing amiss. So this leads to the other two things you can do:
a. Replace the entire system. That should be done by a pro, but it's not nearly as expensive as it might seem. You are merely replacing the detectors themselves (and I do hope at least one of them checks for carbon monoxide...CO...it should). The wiring is all in place, and this is a job you even could probably do, but plan a weekend for it, or a good long day. That should solve your problem. [I presume you've replaced all the back-up batteries by now.)
b. [This one I never told you!] Turn the power off to the hardwired alarms and install 2-4 combination smoke/CO alarms. Kidde makes a darn good one for about $50. They run on AA batteries and work just fine. Put those in logical places throughout your house and keep the hardwired system in place but not turned on. That would solve all your problems. Then if you ever sell your home and need it inspected, just turn on the hardwired alarm system again and explain the stand-alone battery-powered alarms were just for extra carbon monoxide protection.
I am quite content, though I live in a rather small home, that in case of fire (difficult since I don't cook other than in the microwave and don't smoke) or carbon monoxide, I will be well protected. But again, you never heard that from me. I'm not advocating breaking the law, just sort of circumventing it for a good night's sleep.
My bottom line if I had to make a semi-educated guess is that the whole system probably needs to be replaced. So you have ample choices now. Keep trying to get in touch with Kidde (they've gobbled up everyone else, so are now the big guy on the street), of course, then consider the options I've presented.
Let me know what you decide and how it works out, please.
Regards!
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Fred,
Thanks for such a detailed response! You've given me a lot to think about.
This afternoon, I called my local municipality, and I was disappointed to learn that the code requires hardwired detectors. In fact when the fire inspector got on the line, he was a little huffy when I explained the situation, and I told him I wanted to disconnect or remove the hardwired smoke alarms (the new Firex 5000's that I recently bought to replace the old ones) and I wanted to install new battery operated ones instead. After I told him that lack of sleep was making me very grumpy, he toned down his comments a little bit.
The hard wired smoke detectors are all on one circuit. I've become very familiar with the circuit breaker box and where the circuit breaker for the smoke alarms is located. (I labeled it, too)
As I mentioned, I recently bought six new Firex 5000 smoke detectors, and we installed them last week. When the random night time chirping continued, we checked the connections and tested all of the batteries. I've tried several kinds of new batteries, hoping that changing them would solve the problem, and now I have lots of new 9 volt batteries in my kitchen drawer, and the smoke detectors still chirp.
When you said that it's possible that I'd need to replace the entire system, did you mean that I should replace all of the Firex smoke detectors again?
I'm going to try again to contact Kidde consumer service, and hopefully I can get through to someone who can help me.
I have a feeling I'm going to have to bring in an electrician to check everything over.
Thanks again for your quick and thorough response. I'll be sure to let you know how this all progresses.
Sleepless
Answer
Hi Jane,
Well, I must admit I was afraid that the city would require that. I don't understand it myself. They seem to presume that we residents don't have the brains to replace the batteries in our detectors every year. Hardwired detectors are just one big pain. At least they are on one circuit.
No, I had forgotten the part about your buying new detectors, so those should be fine. There's something else causing this problem, and sadly it probably will require an electrician (does rape and pillage sound about right?) to fix it. I don't even want to know what that might cost. If you were in northern Michigan, I could recommend a tremendous electrician who's moving up there from here (Detroit) in two weeks. Otherwise you're on your own on that one. I suspect Kidde will not be able to help you much, though there may be something about this particular alarm that they actually know about...a quirk or something.
As I said earlier, just about anything can set them off. That is precisely why I do NOT like hardwired alarms, and they provide absolutely no benefit over stand-alone smoke detectors. None! I had one guy write to me and (there's a phrase for it but not in polite company) holler at me for suggesting stand-alone, battery-powered alarms. "All places require hardwired alarms," he said. Well, that's not quite true. The national code recommends them, but it's up to the cities to implement that code or choose an alternative.
My earlier suggestion to you as to how to get around this still stands. Just remember to turn the circuit breaker back on when/if you sell the house!
Keep me informed. My security site link is not active any longer, but you can always reach me directly through info@blackdogediting.org. That may allow us to discuss topics in greater length.
Good Luck!
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