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Smoke Alarm Cause of House Fire!

Francis Vineyard

Francis Vineyard

Registered User
Joined
Jan 1, 2010
Messages
3,105
Location
Charlottesville, VA
Well possible; there was an intermittent electrical burning odor upstairs off and on for about a month then last week at about 11:45 pm the wife wakes me up to investigate why the all the alarms where blaring for about 5-10 seconds approximately every hour. None of the detectors indicated source of smoke with the red light sequence. I disconnected the detectors one a time to isolate the culprit. It was the 4th of 6 detectors at 3 am when I could finally continuously go back to sleep.

Took the alarm apart and notice the large black resister for the red capacitor was the source of heat and smoke. Alarm install date: June 09, 2007.

 
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I'm not sure but there should be a warranty. Get ahold of the manufacturer and offer to give them the detector if they first send you six new detectors.
 
mtlogcabin, thanks. Correct I can't hear the alarms including at work where the strobes are blocked from my vision outside my office. When I was a bachelor my cats would alert me and still do; now the wife does a good job of hearing for me. Our new puppy snored like a pig through it all.

Francis
 
If we ran that call it would not be classified as a fire but as an "Alarm malfunction". The smoke that is essential to the operation of all electrical equipment got out so it no longer works.
 
All the others test okay without false alarm; disassemble another one and same thing. Will write the manufacturer in addition to CPSC. Already ordered new combo's; smoke/co.





 
Francis Vineyard said:
All the others test okay without false alarm; disassemble another one and same thing. Will write the manufacturer in addition to CPSC. Already ordered new combo's; smoke/co.



Click to expand...
Are these the original smoke alarms installed in your home?

What is the manufacture date on them??
 
Good catch!

Hard to tell if it is the Kidde FireX 1276E or i12060 ionization smoke alarm. The first has a 5 year warranty, the second a 10-year warranty.

The 810-2568 and 950-0105 shown on the circuit board do not appear to match the associated unit part numbers: 820-0394, 2100592, 2100693, 2100693, 21005928, 21006931, 21006376, 1276-9991, 1276-9995, 1276-9997, or 1276-9998.

Hopefully the sticker on the back (not pictured) will have the information you need.
 
After I disconnected another detector last night it activated on battery power as soon it was flip since this position allowed smoke to flow directly into the sensor. Sure enough circuit board was overheated. Will check on my neighbors this weekend; her house was built a year before mine but a different electrician.

I submitted the incident and photos to CPSC online and they are to contact the manufacturer.

Found this Amazon review posted 2010;

This review is from: Kidde i12040 120V AC Wire-In Smoke Alarm with Battery Backup and Smart Hush (Tools & Home Improvement)

I too had 8ea of the 1275's (approx. 8 years old), one of which nearly caught on fire! The inside circuit board is burned BLACK from overheating and popping a resistor. It actually got so hot it melted the white buzzer wire to the circuit board and discolored the top of the white housing! I emailed Kidde and got a stonewall of "that is supposed to happen (the crispy burned circuit board)", "its out of warranty", "it was a power spike", "its near the end of it useful life", etc. When I confronted them with the fact that if the unit had encountered a power spike, why are the rest of them okay and it didnt affect anything else in the house....at that point they simply stopped returning my emails. I am shopping for a different system to replace the Kidde CRAP, even if it means rewiring the house for a competitors system! I am turning the detector over to the Consumer Product Safety Commission for further evaluation.
 
Checked the neighbor and has a different model with a completely different circuit board and has a different problem with one that goes into alarm about 30 minutes after a battery is replaced.
 
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