goldstar
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Electrical Contractor
Just curious to know if any of you have recently had experienced any problems with BRK, 120V interconnected smoke alarms. I had occasion to replace (6) this past weekend at a customer's house. Her husband was an EC who passed away several years ago and installed these smoke alarms himself. He did an exceptionally neat job but it took me a while to figure out some of the things he had done with respect to the entire system.
First off, I removed ALL the existing Firex smoke alarms (well at least I thought I did). When I installed the first new BRK unit I tested it and triggered the house's fire alarm system. After calling the central station and straightening that out it took me over an hour to find the (2) relay modules that were in 4 11/16" JB's in the attic. I then went back to the initial unit and retested it only to find that there was an additional Firex unit in the crawl space. I removed that and installed a new BRK combo unit.
Now, getting to the problem, I had (3) combo units installed and all worked perfectly. I installed the first std. smoke alarm in the master BR and still everything worked fine. When I attempted to install the second smoke alarm in another BR, just as I removed the unit from the box I pulled out the plastic strip and closed the battery compartment. I didn't even plug it into the 120V cord and it started going into alarm mode. I opened up another unit and it seemed OK. I connected it to 120V power via the cord and the unit went into alarm mode and wouldn't stop. I also tried connecting only the 120V feed and not the red wire and had the same problem. It went into alarm but obviously didn't trigger the others.
If any of you have any ideas on what I should be trouble-shooting I would appreciate it.
Thanks.
First off, I removed ALL the existing Firex smoke alarms (well at least I thought I did). When I installed the first new BRK unit I tested it and triggered the house's fire alarm system. After calling the central station and straightening that out it took me over an hour to find the (2) relay modules that were in 4 11/16" JB's in the attic. I then went back to the initial unit and retested it only to find that there was an additional Firex unit in the crawl space. I removed that and installed a new BRK combo unit.
Now, getting to the problem, I had (3) combo units installed and all worked perfectly. I installed the first std. smoke alarm in the master BR and still everything worked fine. When I attempted to install the second smoke alarm in another BR, just as I removed the unit from the box I pulled out the plastic strip and closed the battery compartment. I didn't even plug it into the 120V cord and it started going into alarm mode. I opened up another unit and it seemed OK. I connected it to 120V power via the cord and the unit went into alarm mode and wouldn't stop. I also tried connecting only the 120V feed and not the red wire and had the same problem. It went into alarm but obviously didn't trigger the others.
If any of you have any ideas on what I should be trouble-shooting I would appreciate it.
Thanks.