If you’ve ever had your system (Hobbyist or home system) activate for a real conditions like smoke or a pull, even if it was false, please share here.
Once, my mother was using the oven and it needed to be cleaned and stuff started smoldering at the bottom and the kitchen filled with an almost unnoticeable amount of smoke and it activated my alarm. Maybe you guys have other more interesting stories to share?
One time I hit my pull with a ladder and it set it off. I’ve had a humidifier and shower steam set off the smoke detector In the hall. Smokes have been set off from the slightest bit of smoke, from cooking, or candles. A fly went in one of my smokes and blocked the Sensors
Back around 6th grade, when I was just starting out in the fire alarm hobby, I used to have a Honeywell T361A “Farm-O-Stat” connected to a homemade panel as a ‘heat detector.’ The thing maxed out at around 100 degrees, so if the sun hit it through the window for long enough it would cause an alarm condition.
As for my current systems, I’ve never had them activate on their own.
My smoke alarms have gone off for cooking. But given I don’t have any hooked up for a system, no.
Truealarm heat detectors are fickle little bastards… :?
The window story is very similar to what I’ve experienced… If the sun goes through my window at just the right angle and for long enough, it sets off a supervisory if it continues for a set time, it goes into alarm…
My old house had BRK 4120 interconnected smoke alarms that were eventually recalled; we never knew that though. They had a fault in them that would cause them to false at all hours of the night, so I lost a lot of sleep from that over the years. This happened from when I was in second grade all the way till fifth grade; then the electrician finally came and replaced all of them with Kidde smoke alarms. We never had that issue again.
It’s been about a month but man do I have a good one!
Okay, so on 06/14/17 (yesterday), my alarm was activated. I have horn/strobes throughout the house, and a 2-wire smoke detector loop partially covering the second floor. A System Sensor 2W-B in my bedroom, in the hallway I have a 2151 and a 2451. Behind the 2451 in the same box is a FireX 499 relay module to tie in the interconnect for the 125vac smoke alarms in with my panel. I had just installed a System Sensor 2400 in another bedroom in place of a 125vac smoke alarm, and I left the house. A few hours later, my mother calls me and tells me the fire alarm is going off. It turns out that the oven needs cleaning, and things were smoldering at the bottom of it. My father opened the oven and it activated the smoke alarm in the kitchen. I also have a wireless photoelectric smoke detector in there, but it didn’t activate. The alarm energized the interconnect and the relay activated the smoke detector loop, setting off the alarm.
The very next day, the air conditioner in the attic starts dripping condensation all over the ceiling in a bedroom. Water pooled inside of a smoke alarm. I made the mistake of taking it down and putting up a different one after drying with a towel. I left the house again a few hours later and ten minutes after I leave, the same thing happened to the second one, and this time it activated, tripping the relay and activating the alarm. Model is pictured below.
I assume that the flooded one is completely ruined then?
I’m not sure. I have the original, which had water all over the board. I put a spare up there and the case filled with water and the sensing chamber Is the lowest part on the board, so it filled with water too. I’m not putting any other spares up until this problem is solved, but we’ll see what happens.
So does that mean that you won’t have a smoke detector up in that location that keeps flooding for the foreseeable future?
For now, yes.
