We have several of them that came with our new house in addition to the 1204 model smoke alarms. They are all problematic. They go through batteries every 6 months and they 'chirp' in the middle of the night. The company is not easy to deal with. Recently all of them went off at the same time at 4 am and there was no smoke or fire... the company says to vacuum them out... easy on 15 foot ceilings?... they are a bad product. I am going to replace them all with a reliable brand. Universal Security Instruments USI-7795 120-Volt AC/DC Wired-In Combination Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm
We kept trying to replace the battery, but it kept chirping intermittently, in the middle of the night, waking up our baby and disrupting world peace. Our world anyway.
Ahhh... just found several reviews of another USI smoke alarm with similar issues. Here's a link to one of them from someone who seems to have found the root of the problem (i.e. they break easily and then start chirping):
http://www.amazon.com/review/RKR39B5B094IL/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0026T76AU&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=
Errrrrggh! Dp not buy this detector!
We bought one of these to replace one of our original smoke detectors about 18 months ago. We had to replace the battery every 2 or 3 months which does not make sense, considering the battery is supposed to be a backup for failure of the AC power. The unit has started a single 2 beep chirp which can happen from once every few days to a couple of times a day, not described in the manual. I have vacummed it as recommended, changed batteries, but continue to lose sleep and disconnect the unit in the middle of the night. I am ready to go try another type of unit. We are in summer with absolutely no source of CO in the house, so definitely defective. When searching the web for some help, appears short battery life and chirping is common. These may be cheaper, but if you have to replace them every 12 to 24 months, the apparent savings really turns out to be a much higher cost.
I have several of these unit in my house and they seem like a poor quality item. I suspect the builder used the cheapest detector that would meet code. Incidentally, this seller is asking about 6-7 times what the product should sell for. It should be in the $10-15 dollar range. I am going to switch to a new brand. Hopefully I have more confidence in the First Alert unit.
The price was right on this combo alarm, but the quality is NOT. I installed several of these in my residence in 2008 after a whole house remodel. Every single one of them have failed by now (3 years later). They scared the heck out of everybody by randomly, intermittently alarming in the middle of the night - with increasing frequency - until replacement. Battery changes didn't matter, so it wasn't the cause... Of course, following Murphy's Law, it happened every 2 hours starting the evening I had company from out-of-town staying over. Trashed these and got some Kiddie combo alarms. Much better!
I had 5 of these alarms professionally installed and ganged together. One of the monitors would signal elevated CO levels without any CO-producing equipment running. I moved the bad monitor to different locations and had the same result, one failing monitor. I recommend not purchasing this product.
We had two interlinked USI-7795 combination smoke and CO alarms installed in our home in 2009 during a remodel. When they sounded we evacuated the house and stayed in a hotel for the night. We aired out the house and they were fine the next day. We then had a CO detection company ($$$!) come in and do a CO assessment. No CO anywhere. I rented a highly sensitive detector and when the alarms went off again, I was prepared. Again, no detectable CO with the very expensive and sensitive unit. Replaced these less than two year old defective units with First Alert. I have seen nothing that would convince me to buy USI again. We will see how it goes with the BRK/First Alert units.
I swapped out the USI smoke alarm located in the room with a gas furnace for this smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. In just a few minutes we had added protection if a carbon monoxide situation developed.
The swap of units was easy and trivial.
I did try another brand before the USI and discovered that even though the socket on the other device would plug in, the wiring was different. When the sparks jumped and the smoke came out of the other brand detector, I knew they weren't plug compatible. So if you have USI devices now, this is a nice upgrade for added CO protection. If you have another brand, be careful..... and check the polarity of the leads before assuming that just because the plug fits, the wiring is correct. - Co Detector - Smoke Alarm - Smoke Detector - Combination Smoke'
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