Smoke alarm batteries should be replaced every year. Moisture, humidity, heat and cold can shorten a battery’s life, regardless of its use-by date. Most CO (carbon monoxide) detectors lose their effectiveness after five years and smoke/photoelectric alarms may stop working after ten years.
Smoke detectors are excellent safety devices. But occasionally a smoke detector will start “chirping” or worse, sound a non-stop alarm for no apparent reason. Here’s what you can do if this happens:
If it’s a battery-powered smoke detector, take out the battery and replace it with a new one. If there’s still a problem, replace the entire smoke detector.
If it’s a 120 Volt hardwired smoke detector, turn off your circuit breakers one by one until the noise stops. Then turn on all the circuit breakers again except the one controlling the smoke detector. If it continues to chirp or sound an alarm, it needs to be replaced.
If you detector continues to chirp or the alarm won’t stop, call us to assess and fix the problem to insure that your detectors are functioning the way they should in order to keep your family and home safe.