WNY Handyman

The same thing happened in my new house. I spoke with the company and they refuse to stand by their warranty.

I had the exact same thing happen in our house after 6 years of normal operation (and replacing the 9-volt batteries regularly). There was no explanation for the alarm – customer service said a spider might have set it off, but I’m a little skeptical. I’ll give the system one more chance then replace it. Not the best way to wake up in the morning!

Same thing happened to us. It is 4:21am right now and I was on the internet looking up what could’ve possibly set off my alarm. This article is going to allow my wife to sleep better now. Any recommendations for a replacement??

I am having the same problem. I have 5 units with problems in 3.and I was able to make the problem “move” by swapping units. Mine have gone off in rooms where the AC/heat was not running, there was no fan, and the room (and entire wing of the house) was not occupied. Curiously, mine also have only gone off in the middle of the night.

I don’t want to come off as an alarmist here or anything, but we lost our house to a fire back in December. The odd thing was, that our smoke detectors never went off. We were awake at the time and able to get the attic fire out initially, but lost the house to a rekindle later that night while staying at a relatives.

Just for everyones information, please keep an eye on your home after a fire if it ever happens. Rekindles are very common so we were told, had we known to keep an eye on it we might not have lost so much.

The fire inspector traced the origin back to, of all things our smoke detector in the master bedroom. Probably due to bad wiring of the system, not the detector itself.

Insurance has been great to us through all of this, they put us up in a very nice rental home while our house is rebuilt. Needless to say a few weeks after the fire we we’re jittery, so when the smoke alarms went of on New Years Day for no reason we we’re ready to get a different place! But, the landlord traced the faulty alarm and replaced it no problems since.

Its my hope that by sharing this information that people become educated about their smoke detection systems and keep them maintained.

Same thing happend to me at 12:30 this morning in our master bedroom. New build with the 1275 installed. It lasted about 10 seconds or so. It shut itself off. Do I have to reset it and how can i help to prevent it from happening again?

Thanks

This just happened to me. It’s now 5:37am after 2 false alarms within about 10 minutes of each other. BUT… I’m renting this house and there is only one alarm that is not connected to any others. So only one is going off. It’s a Kidde but the landlord installed it, so I have no idea what model it is. I just know it’s made to ignore things like burning toast and it’s hard-wired. Seems likely it would be this one if it’s the cheapest cause our landlord is extremely cheap.

I did actually notice webs attached to it when I looked closely and we have had a problem with a lot of spiders before, so now I really wonder. I cleaned up the webs on the ceiling and tomorrow will vacuum the area, and see if this happens again.

I built our house and used Kidde 1275 units. It’s 3 stories so I used 1 on each floor and 1 in each bedroom for a total of 6, plus a Kidde carbon monoxide alarm in the system. Three years ago, shortly after installing the units and moving in, they’d start going off for no reason. Always between 3 and 5 am. I called Kidde and they suggested the cause was dust due to new construction. They suggested using a a hair dryer to clean the units. I cleaned them but still got false alarms. I ultimately left the 3rd floor unit disconnected. Since then, there have been several episodes each year since. Now, they’ve gone off two nights in a row. First at 3 am. This morning at 5 am. Each time I removed several units. This morning, there were actually 2 episodes and after the second one I removed the CO detector. Now, out of 7 units, I’ve got 1 smoke alarm left. What a disappointment these units are.

Same problem – always giving false alarms at 3am. In addition to that, here’s the thing that really bugs me that nobody else has mentioned: These are AC powered units with battery backup. Yet the batteries need to be replaced about every year. So the detectors are actually draining the batteries at the same rate that non-AC powered detectors do. WHY HAVE AC POWER TO THEM IF YOU HAVE TO REPLACE THE BATTERIES EVERY YEAR ANYWAY??? I have eleven of these in my house, so replacing the batteries can be quite expensive and time consuming! I know this is not due to the “shelf life” of the battery expiring – many batteries I have removed have a shelf-life expiration date printed on them showing shelf life for years after the detector has drained the life out of them. THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST PRODUCTS I HAVE EVER BOUGHT! KIDDE SHOULD FACE A CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT!

Oh my goodness. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see this post. Thank you so much! All 7 alarms in my house went off at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday and I was home alone. I’ve never been so scared. Nothing I did stopped them from going on and off for two hours. I haven’t been able to sleep since because I’m afraid of getting shocked out of bed again. These are terrible and I’m taking them all down tonight so I can sleep in peace! Luckily, I have a couple of ADT smoke detectors, so I’m not going completely without smoke detection tonight.

I have 3 units. One of these smoke detectors keeps going off about ever other night. It does not go full blast but chirps. This is the only one that does it so far. The others do not make a sound yet. I thought that if one went off, since they were hard wired together, that the others would also go off. This is also model 1275.

Dick

Wow, i thought i was crazy. We have had this problem with Kiddie(not sure of model #) off and on for a year. They used to be wired with our house alarm, that just got too crazy. They came and un-wired, and capped them off. You guessed it, the no longer wired smoke alarms still going off. The times were also between 3am and 5am. I replace my batteries every 3 months and clean with vacuum. No humidity, cooking or dusty areas. If someone figures this out pls let me know. It takes forever to get my baby back to sleep after all the nonsense.

OK… we all have the same problem. What is the solution?” is the 1275e that kidde is offering a fix/upgrade? Id like to find something else to plug into the hardwiring of my house.

My house is wired with these models and I’m not at all satisfied with them. On 11/1/08 around 3AM (it seems to always be early in the morning for everyone) all my alarms went off more than normal – probably 1 minute or so. I have about 12 of them in my house. There was an electrical burn smell in one of the bedrooms my visiting inlaws were staying in. Sure enough, it was the smoke alarm itself that burned up! I unwired it and pulled the thing down and it was brown and stinky. The wiring appeared to be fine. It says on the back to replace after 10 years but according to the label this was made in on 1/10/2000. My house was built in late 2000 and finished March 2001. I’m replacing all of them after this since I have two small kids in the house. We do have the early morning ‘three chirps’ as well about 4 times per year. Why do these things ONLY go off between 2AM – 5AM? Shame.

Incredible! our house was built in 2001 with the Kidde 1275 system. You guessed it – alarms going off during the night (usually between 2am – 4am). Several months ago I isolated the problem alarm (it was in our girls room) and took it down. Since then, no problems. I talked to Kidde and they said the system was out of warranty and recommended I purchase an upgrade replacement. I now wonder if I should replace all units with another brand altogether. We have 3 young children and they are terrified when these things startle them awake (doesn’t make their old man any happier, either). So glad to read we are not alone!

Seems like it’s a Kidde problem! I think Kidde Nighthawk AC Combination Smoke & CO Alarm KN-COSM-IB 900-0114 is a newer model, installed in my rented place. Yes, I’m up at 5.40am writing this, the alarm went off at 4am, red light blinking (I think it’s the CO factor). Pushing the hush button silences it for a while but goes off every 15mins. I used a tap to stick down the hush alarm button, hope this works but I hasn’t gone off since then (but it’s after 5am already). Not sure if it’s still functioning by doing that. It’s only my 2nd day here at this apartment and I hope this won’t happen every night!

I have a question
in my apartment, kidde smoke detector is installed (I dont know the model number but it looks like the one in the picture up there)
i turned off the switch of the detector in a fuse box and after few seconds, the alarm went off
so I turned on the switch and it stopped
but since that, the red light starts blinking
(I guess its because the unit is blinking after the alarm goes off like you said .. )

is there anyway that i can turn the red light off?
the alarm didnt go off again after that
but im getting really annoyed by that..

Thanks everyone for posting. Although our first Kidde Smoke Alarm Model i12020 waited to go off at 8:00 a.m., it is New Year’s Day. It wasn’t until they all (7 of them) began to scream throughout the house at 9 a.m. that we pulled ourselves out of bed. The kids were not thrilled about the New Year beginning. We pulled them all from the hard wire to shut them up and put them outside and blew them with air. Then one began to scream again. I grabbed my glasses and began to read the 4 point font on the back of the alarm to figure out why they all decided to wake the neighborhood. While I straining to read, a small white spider bolted from my lap. I’m not sure if I was sleeping with that little guy but there it was. All the post point to one main faulty alarm triggering the group and a possible spider as the cause of alarm malfunction. So thanks for posting! The Kidde product is too high maintenance for my lifestyle. I wouldn’t install them in my primary real estate.

Wow. I can’t beleive that this is happening to so many people. We built our house five years ago and Kiddie was installed. This past smmer the alarms started going off over the slightests smoke ~ oven, toater, car fumes , etc. THey would’t shut off! We had to disconnct all of them (6). We also have Master Guard in our house (wonderful product but pricy) and none of them went off. Today ~ out of the blue ~ the alarms were tripped again. For no reason at all. All of the were cleaned and had new batteries this past fall. I am wondering if the hardwire system is compatable with other alarms. Does anyone know? I am dumping the Kiddie. I went through a house fire once before and every time the darn things go off it freaks me out. By the way, the alarms in the house that burned were wonderful. They were installed incorectly and they still worked. The firemen pried it off the wall (wasn’t on the ceiling) where it had melted and it was still beeping.

I’ve had the same problem with 3 of the 6 Kiddie model 1275 smoke detectors installed in my home. False alarms at 2 – 5 AM. Why only in the early morning hours? Something very strange going on here.

I am up at 1 in the morning the first time and then every 30 mins after that, and the trip is it is a 12040 model that is keep going off. I am so tired of buying stuff that just wont work. This is so dangerous, what if there is a real fire you just might sleep too long because ypu might think it is a false alarm. I am taking them all down and buying something else.

I am glad that I ran across this. We have had probelms off and on and oddly, at night. I would know as I am a stay at home mom and I am home most of the day. It actually just went off again for the 2nd time in 5 minutes even though my Dh went and blew air into what we think is the offending unit and replaced the battery too! OM gosh! And before that it was 3 weeks ago! Our problem is that we have 8 detectors up and down and I am afraid to turn the heat on as it might cause a full blown alarm! I am reading to uplug all of them so we can sleep. We have reset it, changed the battery and now cleaned the only one that is blinking and still……

The comment below was approved to show the level of frustration that homeowners have with these Kidde smoke detectors. It has been edited to blank the cursing, but read it with those words in your head. This is absolutely the feeling you have when you have kids and this is going on. Only to find that it is a false alarm due to a bad product.
=================================================
F**K F**K F**K –

it’s 4 AM last night — or this morning — whatever the f**k you call it –

– and the f**king fire alarms go off — f**king YELLING — “FIRE FIRE FIRE” –

my WORST f**king nightmare.

the dogs flip out.

i get out the broomstick, looking around for fire, and running to each alarm, pushing these f**k’s “buttons” –

nothing works. in the basement, in the house, these F**KS are SCREAMING and BEEPING like little wh***s — ALL AT THE SAME TIME — & OF THEM.

so, i go to the garage in my f**king underwear and get the 8′ f**king ladder. i then cram it around the house, getting it set up, almost marring the walls.

nope — each f**king alarm keeps screaming “FIRE FIRE FIRE” –

i take the one in the basement down. the wh***s are still screaming.

i take the one in the bedroom down — more f**king screaming — kitchen, the same –

– these are 11′ ceilings, mind you —

the two “kids” bedrooms — more screaming. the hallway — MORE F**KING SCREAMING.

then, i carry the a**hole ladder to the attic, and 20′ up is the last little wh**e, screaming – FIRE FIRE FIRE.

i take it down, an hour after it starts, and rip the f**king battery out of it —

– everything stops.

then, getting ready for work, the little f**kers are sitting on the countertop, and one starts going off.

no fires anywhere.

f**kers.

i ordered 7 new ones — different ones.

these bastard are cheap a**hole sh*t — i found –

http://www.wnyhandyman.com/kidde-1275-a-bad-smoke-detector/

i emailed the link to my builder and said YOU will save MONEY in reduced COMPLAINT CALLS by NOT INSTALLING such SH*T in your CUSTOM HOMES.

wh***s.

We’ve had the same problems with the 1275. We have a four unit apt building and live in one of the units and code requires that each unit have interconnected, hard-wired detectors. The false alarms always seem to happen at night and usually between 11 PM and 6 AM. One of us works out of the house and this doesn’t happen in the daytime. We have power fluctuations on our island (Key West) and I suspect that these units are sensitive to that. My electrician said that these units “wear out” after several years and start giving false alarms. I’m also suspicious of dust. Try blowing your detector out with a can of air and see what comes out. You might be surprised.

After having our alarm go off – (Not the first time) I found this post. I am buying new ones in the morning. Our house is only a year old. Does anyone have any reccomendations?

I have 8 of these annoying things in my house. I have 3 of the Kidde 1275′s and 5 of the 1273′s. they have been installed for about 1.5 years now and have recently started going off for no reason. The first few times it happened, it was the one in my daughter’s room downstairs that was setting them all off. I moved it upstairs to my son’s room and that (or so I thought) seemed to fix the issue. Well, this morning it happened again. This time it is the one in my other daughter’s room which is also downstairs. The interesting thing about it is that every time they went off, it was during early morning hours between 1am and 5am. Nothing had been running at the time, not the furnace, not the water heater, no fans, no A/C, no nothing! The 1273′s are the ones giving me trouble right now. The 1275′s haven’t given any false alarms yet, but I guess I should expect it pretty soon. We get what we pay for I suppose.

1275 unit three chirps happening a lot ….oh yeah….it’s 4:30 am

Ours went off twice this morning…at 5 and 530 am…came across this site trying to figure out whats wrong. We have a two year old home…
My kids are tired and cranky, we’re tired and cranky. These alarms suck! I almost burnt the house down trying to fry chicken, and the alarms never went off. They have no problem alerting us of NOTHING in the middle of the night though!

I have the same problem – always 3 or 4 am – seems like I have 2 defective ones. I have a total of 9 in series – very AGGRIVATING.

One more thing I wanted to add – You can tell which one is failing by looking for a blinking green light.

ALSO – I have white ceilings and white walls and these peices of crap will turn yellow in just 2 years. No smokers live here and we keep our home very clean.

These smoke detectors are nothing but CRAP!

After researching Kidde model 1275 I learned that it has been
replaced with Kidde nidel i12040. As some of you discovered, there
is a date inside the cover and the whole unit (not just the backup
battery) has to be replaced periodically (6-8 years) because the ionizing function wears out. When it needs replacement it will chirp.

I too had some hard-wired Kidde smoke detectors go off at midnight for about 5 sec. Silence until 15 minutes later and they went off again. This repeated a total of 4 times, at which point I pulled the CB and was able to go back to sleep.

With all these comments and one suggestion that electrical “noise” may have set them off, what are the electrical companies doing during the night to the power. Are they changing voltage or power factors and the Kidde unites are not robust enough to tolerate?

I have 4 of these units in my house built in 2002. The batteries are replaced when the chirping sound denotes a weak battery. I have replaced batteries twice in 7 years. The secret is to use a top of line battery as the manual states.

4 units all hard-wired.

3:45 this morning….all 4 kidde smoke detectors were going off. My 2yr. old was crying, my wife was trembling and I was running down the hallway trying to figure out what was going on. 5 seconds later the unpleasant sound was gone.

My son calmed down, my dog stopped barking and we all went back to bed. 4:00am…high-pitched chirping, buzzing, lights flashing, hearts racing. I jumped out of bed and did the hallway sprint one more time. I discovered that the front bedroom unit was the culprit. I pushed the buttons several times, with force I might add and the units finally stopped.

My wife was scrambling to find the user manual to see what could be wrong. The manual was no help at all. I did notice a small knat on the unit the second time. Not sure if that was the culprit, but it sounds like it could have been.

9am. I called my electrician who installed these units a little over a year ago and told him what was going on. I suggested he stay away from these units, run for the hills if he is offered one and look for an alternate.

Thank you to all who have shared. I am looking for new units this afternoon!!

@hell on wheels
If you can’t express yourself without using your foul language, hopefully your alarms will go off repeatedly every 15 minutes. Apparently you use this filthy mouth among your family environment. Definitely white trash.

well, now I can go back to sleep for at least another hour…all 3 of ours went off at 4:30am exactly 3 years to the date we moved in! I was thinking for sure these all had some kind of timer on them set as a practical joke by our previous owners….why in the world do these go off in the middle of the night? That’s some kind of manufacture trigger if you ask me. Having been in a major house fire as a child, this has really freaked me out, but glad I found this site! Gonna be a lovely day at work tomorrow indeed!! Grrr!!

well mines went off about 4am, scared the crap out of me. it sounded off and then yelled fire one time. I ran around the house looking for fire nothing. it hasnt gone off again but im still nervous, thanks for the post tho.

I am not sure exactly what model mine is but its a kiddie its hardwired with a battery backup. Mine has gone off every morning around 3-4 am. I have 2. One night it will be one another night the other. It rarely goes off in the day. They are brand new no spider webs etc. But as most say I am startled when awaken in the wee hrs of morn by these things going off. Here’s the thing, when it goes off it only rings 4 times then shuts itself off. When it first happened I was unable to sleep but now its almost like I expect it but losing much needed sleep.

MADE IN CHINA

Venture to guess how many will die from fires BECAUSE of defective detectors?