Kidde 1275 a Bad Smoke Detector
If you have a Kidde 1275 smoke alarm. Be prepared for a false alarm. Well, it might never happen, but based on the reviews of the Kidde 1275 at Amazon.com you won’t be the only one if your alarm does go off on its own.
Of course I am not writing this out of the blue. Many builders will install these units in new builds. They are inexpensive hard-wired smoke detectors. However, it isn’t uncommon for these units to be defective, or to go bad and go off in the middle of the night. Ours went off on Friday night at 3 AM, and then at 4 AM. I was able to find the offending unit by simply blowing up at it and setting the alarm off again. I can honestly say that you will probably not sleep as well with the feeling that your alarm will go off in the middle of the night.
Since this is a hard wired system, every detector will sound when the alarm is triggered. If you have young children, I can assure you that this is something that they will not forget. When this happened last year, we brushed it off as a one time event. My son, who was 3 at the time, kept his fan on for a couple of months because he thought that would stop the alarm from sounding.
One nice thing is that you can locate the offending alarm. It will be the unit that is blinking after the alarm goes off. In my case, I simply pulled the unit from the system. I was pretty certain that it was bad when I was able to set it off by simply blowing on the alarm from 5 feet away.
I write this review in hopes that this does not happen to you. If you are building, or outfitting your house with new smoke detectors, I would recommend that you avoid the Kidde 1275. It received 1 star out of 5 for a reason.
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June 13th, 2007 10:08
The same thing happened in my new house. I spoke with the company and they refuse to stand by their warranty.
October 7th, 2007 10:12
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!
October 10th, 2007 04:24
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??
October 10th, 2007 09:02
Eddie,
I wish that I had advice about a good replacement. My wife went out and purchased some battery operated units. If I hear one more person tell me they called Kidde and a Kidde rep told them that it “must have been a spider” I am going to scream. I have to admit that when mine first happened, I found comfort in the fact that MANY others had the same issue. I found my information in the reviews at Amazon.com.
Good luck. You might want to call the company and ask for replacements. I have heard some people say that they will provide them.
January 9th, 2008 15:16
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.
April 7th, 2008 21:45
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.
April 7th, 2008 21:54
Matt,
Thanks for sharing your story. It would be great if everything worked perfectly. I suppose it is better for them to work when there is not an issue than to not work when there is.
July 26th, 2008 10:24
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
July 28th, 2008 07:34
John,
Not sure that you can “prevent” this from happening again without swapping out the units. I had another set go off at a house I am renovating right now. It was in the middle of the day (high dust and humidity though). They started going off and I couldn’t do anything but laugh when I noticed the brand and model! In my own home, we replaced them with different units.
Bob L.
August 24th, 2008 04:43
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.
August 24th, 2008 19:59
The stories continue to come in. I suppose it isn’t a safety issue, as Matt pointed out, so it isn’t a big concern to them. Maybe the less expensive parts fail more often. Lighter gauge sensors, etc.
September 4th, 2008 08:35
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.
September 4th, 2008 09:07
It is shocking that they continue to sell such a bad unit. The part that amazes me is that they go off in the middle of the night. There must be some reason for that. My wife replaced ours with battery operated units. KIDDE, you must improve that product. The Kidde 1275 is a piece of garbage!
October 2nd, 2008 19:12
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.
October 3rd, 2008 09:50
Laura,
It is amazing how many people have had this issue. I am really floored at the number of alarms that have gone off in the middle of the night. I was in your same shoes and was happy to find that this was a defective unit and not a smoldering fire, or CO issue. Happy you found us.
WNYHandyman.com
October 6th, 2008 00:27
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
October 6th, 2008 08:36
Dick,
That chirp is probably just the battery indicator. Even though they are hard wired, they still have batteries in case the power is out. Replace the battery and the chirp should go away.
WNYHandyman.com