In 2017, I had the replace the smoke alarms with new smoke and heat detectors that met the updated county codes. These are 2GIG-SMKT3-345 smoke detectors, manufactured date 2014, and expiration date 2024. We have at least 10 of these alarms throughout the house, and they all will intermittently start going off. Sometimes the alarm says there is a low battery. Other times it says they are tampered with. The alarms have been going off since January, and sometimes only during the day, when we are not home. My wife and I work in a medical office, and can not just leave our patients to go home and turn off the alarms. The alarms go off, notify the alarm company. The alarm company calls or texts my phone, which I can not carry with me while I am with patients. Then the alarm company calls the fire department, who come to our home for a false alarm. Too many false alarms, they start charging for each one. The alarm company will allow a pass on the alarm for 3 days max. We were told basic stupid advice, like make sure you replace your batteries with new batteries, all 3 AAA, each time. Changing the batteries every every week in all 10 smoke detectors for the past 8 months, is almost 1,000 new batteries we have gone through this year. We called our alarm service, and they have sent out alarm techs, who say the same line, need to use new fresh batteries. Is anyone else having problems with these crappy alarms? Our alarm service (Hotwire Fission phone, internet, and alarm) was suppose to replace the alarms, but just swaps out one faulty alarm for another one from a different location in the house, so we keep having the same problem.
A lot to unpack here. I’m going to try to hit up things individually.
Up front, this is the support website for Surety, we are an Alarm.com service provider, so since you have a different provider, I’m not going to be able to view details on your account or explain your individual alarm instances, but I can try to help with general advice.
In 2017, I had the replace the smoke alarms with new smoke and heat detectors that met the updated county codes. These are 2GIG-SMKT3-345 smoke detectors, manufactured date 2014, and expiration date 2024
If you had these smoke detectors installed in 2017 and they already had a date code of 2014 that immediately strikes me as a concern.
It’s common to receive units manufactured 6 months prior, even up to a year in some cases, but 3 year old smoke detectors are not something I would expect to see from a distributor, and if we did we would send them back. Were these offered at a discount at the time? Were they potentially used when purchased?
We have at least 10 of these alarms throughout the house, and they all will intermittently start going off. Sometimes the alarm says there is a low battery. Other times it says they are tampered with.
Do you know the exact number of detectors? Low battery and tamper alerts are different signals, of course, and indicate specific issues with that specific detector.
Your panel screen, as well as the Alarm.com app if you have access to it, should indicate the exact name of the device which has the trouble condition.
Low battery would of course indicate that the batteries in that specific unit should be replaced. Considering they were already 3 years old when installed I am not surprised you would have dealt with replacing batteries on all of those units so far at least once. Batteries will only last about 3-5 years on average.
Tamper means that the tamper switch is not secured, meaning the smoke detector is not attached to its back-plate properly.
Do you have any detectors that show this commonly? Feel free to post a photo of the inside of that detector (so we can see the tamper switch) and the mounting plate. We might be able to see damage which would cause tampers.
Neither of these are alarm events, they are trouble conditions at the panel.
The alarms go off, notify the alarm company. The alarm company calls or texts my phone, which I can not carry with me while I am with patients. Then the alarm company calls the fire department, who come to our home for a false alarm.
How often are you having false activation of the smoke alarms resulting in alarm signals to the monitoring station? Is it always the same detector? Or have many done this?
The alarm company will allow a pass on the alarm for 3 days max. We were told basic stupid advice, like make sure you replace your batteries with new batteries, all 3 AAA, each time. Changing the batteries every every week in all 10 smoke detectors for the past 8 months, is almost 1,000 new batteries we have gone through this year.
Well I probably don’t need to say this, but that is pretty silly. Batteries should last about 3 years minimum for new Energizer E92 AAA.
All of the smoke detectors could be straight up replaced for less than the cost of 1000 batteries. I hope that is an exaggeration.
I’ll just say any reputable dealer should have suggested just fully replacing those units long ago if you are seriously seeing low battery on them almost weekly. That’s not in any way normal.
Again, is it all smoke detector units doing this? It is more likely that a few have a problem and repeatedly cause issues than all of them.
For any specific detectors that have been experiencing issues your monitoring service could place those detectors in test mode for an extended period, logging the events in history but not act on them to avoid dispatch. Any alarm dealer should be able to do this.
I’m having the same problem with my SMKT3-345 (new batteries still cause it to throw a fault code and beep, despite leaving the batteries out for 24 hours).
Is there a replacement unit that’s recommended?
I’m having the same problem with my SMKT3-345 (new batteries still cause it to throw a fault code and beep, despite leaving the batteries out for 24 hours).
Looks like you are referencing the sensor labeled “Basement Smoke” and “Basement Heat” right?
That sensor is reporting supervision malfunctions. With an SMKT3 that can mean one of a handful of things as supervision issues occur with more than just signaling trouble or low battery.
Look at the LED flashing on the sensor. Does the LED blink every 4 seconds? Every 8 seconds? Every 12 seconds?
Yes, this is the basement smoke and basement heat sensor.
The yellow light blinks every six seconds. And even with new batteries it beeps just like when the batteries are low.
The expiration date is 2022.
Regardless of what the cause is, it will beep every 48 seconds.
It will flash either every 4 seconds. Every 8 seconds. Or every 12 seconds, depending on the type of issue. 6 second interval is not an interval it uses.
4 seconds between flashes means it is a general internal hardware fault. This means the device should be replaced.
8 seconds between flashes means the sensing unit is dirty. You can try to clean with compressed air/wipe off surface dust, blow out the sensing element area.
12 seconds indicates low battery.
I did time it with a stopwatch and it flashes every 4 seconds. Given that it’s an internal hardware fault, is there a way to troubleshoot or should I just replace?
Thanks.
For a general fault it should be replaced. Especially with a replacement date of 2022.
The SMKT8 would be the replacement model.