AboutDave Neuweiler Expertise The design and application of burglary and fire systems for homes and businesses. Helping alarm owners understand how their system works. Helping to troubleshoot false alarm problems. Questions about monitoring issues.
Experience Over a quarter century in the industry. Experience in installation, service, and monitoring centers. Training manager for a national protective services company; director of education and training for a national trade organization for for alarm dealers.
Question Attempted to replace one Firex FX1020 (over 20yrs old) with a Kidde i12020.
When connected, all alarms sounded. Could not silence.
Do I need to replace ALL old Fx1020s with same model (i12020)
Answer Hello Douglas, and thanks for your question.
The short answer is yes, for two reasons.
First, it's rarely a good idea to mix and match different brands (there are exceptions, but you need to find these in the product information available at the manufacturer's web site). I'm sure if you check the manual that came with the new detector, you'll find this warning.
Second, smoke detectors have an expected useful life of about ten years. Yours are well beyond that.
So change them all out, and rest easy for the next decade!
