Honeywell SWIFT Wireless Fire Alarm recall

Anyone using the Notifier, Firelite or GW/FCI version of SWIFT check with your Customer Service Rep as there has been a recall by The Consumer Product Safety Commission.

There is a mandatory firmware upgrade of the wireless gateways.

How often is it that fire alarm products get recalled?

I guess buildings using this system will have post a fire watch until the affected components are replaced.

I’m glad that I don’t have that smoke detector then in my house because with how cheap my father is, he probably would ignore the recall.

See for context: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/honeywell-international-recalls-swift-wireless-gateway-sold-with-fire-alarm-systems

It appears that this has to do with SWIFT wireless smoke detectors’ ability to activate to the proper standards when they are extremely contaminated with dust. A hard enough task when you have more noise than signal from the detection chamber. This is the “drift compensation” that modern photoelectric smoke detectors employ, alarming on short-term rises in obstruction, which is assumed to be smoke, but not on long-term rises, which is assumed to be dust accumulation. But apparently they erred too far on the side of avoiding false alarms in this case.

Still, I would assume you would receive a “dirty” and then “very dirty” trouble before this case is relevant. Both of these would earn a write-up in our annual inspections, and the fire marshal would likely order them fixed for a building to continue to be occupied. The system is already compromised in this case.

Not to say you shouldn’t update this as soon as possible, but it doesn’t seem more serious than the broken horn/strobes, elevators that fail to recall, doors that lock when the door holders release, and the myriad other issues that I see on a frequent basis.