Smoke Alarms Malfunctioning
I have a two year old apartment that has five smoke alarms that are connected. When one alarm detects smoke, all the alarms go off.
The alarms are malfunctioning, they chirp like they need a new battery. The tenant says that she has replaced the batteries for all the alarms three times to no avail.
What causes this problem and what kind of professional would be able to fix it?
Any insights are appreciated!
donny
Thanks for the suggestions, for some reason the problem fixed itself!
I have a customer (I am an electrical contractor) that had the same problem. The alarm would go off at night for no www.reason.They had me change all the upstairs detectors. Problem solved.
Sometimes the sensor in a smoke detector just wears out and the detector starts chirping. I have had this happen with alarms that are about ten years old.
Even though you say the apartment is only two years old, no telling how old the alarms are. They could have been sitting on the shelf a long time before the builder installed them. Even if the alarms are not old enough to suspect age related breakdown, maybe the sensor was defective (especially if made in Mexico in a contaminated environment).
An electrician can bypass one alarm in the series to identify the culprit, or it may be just as cost efficient to replace all five.
Did the problem fix itself because your tenant disconnected the alarms?
Or maybe your tenant was just telling you the batteries were changed when in fact they were not changed.
JS.