ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Smokey problems

I have not seen this happen, however the mother and kids (3 and 5 years) all claim to have been woken up in the middle of the night over the weekend by the problem. I swapped them all out today to see what happens. I'll report in tomorrow with the outcome.

Thanks for all of the responses on this!!

Al

...however the mother and kids (3 and 5 years)all claim to have been woken up in the middle of the night...

I rest my case.

Unfortunately I see this a lot. I know we all want to please the customer but wild goose chases cost money.

I learned a long time ago that what the customer describes is most often than not nothing like what the problem really is. If I can't see the problem occur for myself I take what the customer has to say with a grain of salt. There is just no justification in spending a lot of of time and money changing things out without first having first hand knowledge of the problem then logically troubleshooting it.

Sorry, but the opinions of a 3 and 5 year old as well as a groggy adult would not be grounds for me to spend a lot of time on this. I think you went beyond "the call of duty" here given the circumstances. If the problem still occurs after changing all detectors I would politely tell them that you will have to see it for yourself before you can determine what the problem is.

-Hal

We have had a problem (up nothern Illinois) with condensation dripping on smoke detectors, from our conduit in attic. Duct seal or running all conduits into sides usually works. Could be an issue with NM too, device allows different temperatures to mix via air openings in device. Some detectors come with gasket, possibility this is cause? Good luck. Scott. God knows I've been chasing bad smokes around, usually on Friday nights or Sunday!

Well…. The customer was right. There was definitely a bad smokey somewhere in the bunch. After I replaced all of them in their house, I installed them into another house as an experiment to see if I would get the same result of if she was just a nutcase looking for attention.

As soon as I turned on the breakers to test out the house the smoke alarms went off nonstop. I didn’t take the time to find out what one was the problem, I just ripped them out and installed new ones.

...Well, the customer was right.

Not!

Contrary to what they claimed, they ALL went into alarm didn't they? If you were told that in the beginning you would have replaced them all and been out of there a long time ago. How many hours, trips and $$$ did it cost you playing with that one detector because THEY said it was the bad one?

The customer is rarely right and if you base your actions on what they report rather than confirming the problem yourself its going to cost you.

-Hal



[This message has been edited by hbiss (edited 06-18-2004).]

I usually use the battey back up type, and one bad battery will set a warning alert, and occasionally set them all off. Sometimes customers will reffer to the "battery warning beep" as it going off too.

Also, if one has no power, and the rest do, this will set it off randomly too. Check the status light on all of them. BRK is green for OK, red for no power. I had a hair puller like this once due to a bad harness.

We've come accross a few with bad harness in the past. That's probably what the problem was, however it was driving me nuts not being able to figure what one was causing the problem so I'm just returning the lot of them....