fire alarm problem (maybe ?)

[steve2470]

I moved into my condo 10 months ago, so I don't know the precise condition of my fire alarm. There's never been any fires or even smoke of any kind.

Today I was taking a nap. The fire alarm started blaring off intermittently and woke me up. I jumped out of my bed, confirmed there was no fire quickly and turned the damn thing off at the breaker box. I just now restored power to it and it squawked briefly as I did.

The power supply where I live has gone down twice (both in the last month) in ten months, and had some brownouts/surges, per my UPS hooked up to my computer. Could the fire alarm have been triggered by a brownout, surge or outage ? Besides that, I have no idea why the fire alarm would go off when there's no fire or smoke. Thanks for your time.

Steve

[Kaleva]

1. Does your fire alarm have batteries?

Many do even if they are wired in. Could be the batteries, if it does have such, are getting old and need to be replaced.

[steve2470]

2. ok I'll have to climb up there and check that, thanks ! nt

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. It's not by chance also a CO2 detector, is it?

[steve2470]

4. I don't know

I need to get off my arse tomorrow and go take a good look at it.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. If that thing is hard wired it could very well be

I think most of the hard wired units were done as new construction/remodel and most building codes require CO2

[steve2470]

6. Ok I climbed up my stepladder to look at it

I tried to get the round mustard-colored plastic housing off the unit but only succeeded in prying it loose from its circular mounting bracket. Since I'm a klutz with mechanical things (who would have thought, huh), I didn't try very long to get the housing off the unit to check for a battery. I screwed it back into its mounting bracket.



It looks a lot like that one above, except a tad taller overall unit and mustard-colored. After I restored the AC power to it, everything was fine until today, when it squawked again. The WEIRD thing is, if the battery is dead or dying, why the hell would it not squawk every 15 minutes or so ? I can't see a battery in it so far, but then again I'm having to work at arm's length with it. Of course, I can't see a brand name yet.

I really don't want to break this thing accidentally.

ETA: I just restored the AC power to it, and it did NOT squawk at me at all. The red indicator light is lit inside the unit, so I'm assuming it's functional.

[Adsos Letter]

7. Ours look quite similar

When the battery loses enough juice it will begin to squawk; fairly long intervals at first, with shorter and shorter intervals as the power decreases.
On ours, the light is green when fully functional.

[steve2470]

8. hmmm I'll try again tomorrow

It's mounted pretty high up on my living room wall, so it's really hard to do things with it without getting a really high stepladder. If mine is like yours, I'm guessing the battery is totally dead now.

[steve2470]

9. end to the smoke detector saga (not fire alarm, as I found out)

The damn thing was a SMOKE DETECTOR, not fire alarm. It is so old, the company doesn't even list it on their website. There was no battery inside. It was a totally AC-powered unit.

It was a BRK Electronics 1769ACI smoke detector. I found an old manual to it, which states the possible problem:

There is no battery backup on model 1769ACI. Try vacuuming the smoke detector to remove dust that may be causing the alarm to think it is smoke particles.

Now I'm off to replace it. Thanks so much for your patience everyone, and hopefully this information will help someone else.

eta: It may be over 30 years old, per this forum post.

Steve

[Nac Mac Feegle]

10. Smoke detectors will trigger if they get dusty

They work by looking for something obstructing a gap (such as smoke). If they get some dust build up in the gap, they will falsely trigger. If it's been in place a long time, there could be a buildup in the sensor gap. They're not really difficult to replace, if you have a ladder and a couple of tools.

Good luck.