This morning, our smoke alarms started chirping every 108 minutes…I mean 1 minute. Started switching batteries around. Chirp. Vanessa ran over to Walgreens to buy replacement batteries for all alarms. Chirp. Cleaned out all alarms with air can. Chirp. Vanessa called tech support and somehow got disconnected. Chirp. She called them back and they told her to kill the power on the problem alarm because it was probably misremembering the battery charge. Who knows where these things are getting their power from? So we had to turn off our main house power to cut power to alarm, remove battery, and press test button for 30 seconds, then replace battery and turn power back on. This is the undocumented method for returning the Firex 5000 (FADC 120-1182) smoke alarms to their factory settings. I have learned that one of the most irritating sounds in the world is a loud beep every minute. I was almost thinking of another undocumented alarm reset method…ripping the alarm off of the ceiling.

UPDATE: Vanessa says it’s chirping again! Lesson learned, don’t get Firex smoke alarms. This one is only 4 years old. She switched 2 detectors around and it seems to be that socket, so she just unplugged it.

UPDATE: The next day, a friend came over and looked at it for us. He tightened an electrical twist connector in the wall and it seems to be working again.

UPDATE: Years later, the fun returns. I’ve found on one of them that it stops chirping when I leave the battery door ajar. How fun. Anyway, you might try checking the three twisty connections that connect your fire alarm to the power, ground, and alarm network. You have to remove the alarm from the ceiling, unplug it, and pull the wires out enough to examine the connections. If one of the connections isn’t making good contact, it could cause your alarm to be powered only by the battery. I just decided to replace this alarm, since it was only about $10 for a new one on Amazon.

12 thoughts on “04/19/2006”

  1. Regarding the Firex detectors, I have had the same irritating problems.
    About 8 detectors, replacing one every few months with the same
    random beeping problem, for 9 years in the house now. Getting expensive and losing
    a lot of sleep. It tends to happen at night (or maybe that is just
    when we are around???).

    have you had any more problems? What exactly did your friend tighten
    in the wall?

  2. My wife and I woke to a ear shattering false alarm from all 6 of our Firex 120-1182 smoke detectors. Non of them would shut off so I tried your “undocumented alarm reset method”. Ripping them off of the ceilingand smashing on on the tile floor was as morally up-lifting as one could imagine, at 3 AM. As I type they are still chirping…… now another has just been removed from the ceiling and is being prepped for surgery. These things suck…..

  3. My wife and I have had the same problems of the smoke detector alarms all going off. We replace the batteries yearly and had six months on the battery before our problems arose. An electrican can out, listened to what happened, and just replaced the smoke detector. It stopped the problem. Today, Dec 9th, now the alarms are sounding again. I find it hard to believe in our case that the detector is the problem because it happened in the same bedroom again but not the same detector. This time when the electrican comes out, I having him check the wiring and if that doesn’t fix the problem to replace all the Firex 120-1182 smoke detectors with something else. As for the chripping, we have found that noise is letting you know that the battery needs to be replace.

  4. I have 8 of the Firex smoke alarms and about 4:30am one morning they started going off and woke up the whole family (I guess a good thing). I determined which one it was and switched it out with another one and the good one had problems after I swiched them back. I shut the power off and that fixed the second problem. I am starting to wonder if this is the EOL (Endo of Life) for these and I need to get another brand and replace all of them. It is kind of weird I had the same problem with tech support as to when I called they hung up on me.

  5. I have 6 of these. Same chirping issues as above. Have replaced batteries a few times. I then did a websearch and found this webpage today and followed the memory draining recommendation above of holding the button down with it disconnected and no battery. This seems to have helped.

  6. Our 5 Firex FADC 4619 alarms have been waking us up in the middle of the night with false alarms every two or three months for the three years since our house was built. We have had the electrician who installed them out twice, vacuumed the alarms, and installed new batteries. We curse FIREX every time it happens. If there is a better brand, we would like to know it.

  7. The cursed Firex smoke alarm chirps through the night, but not every night. It always chirps about 10 times then stops. Then an hour later does the same thing. Sometimes we will make it a couple of nights without any chirping than all of the sudden it starts up again. Taking the battery out does nothing to cut the power. We will now try the reset idea listed on this website and hope for the best tonight.

  8. What is up with the 3 am beep? It is like everyone is getting it around this time. I just got my first series of single loud beep. Will troubleshoot in morning and repost findings.

  9. I was home alone when all 5 (3 of them are with in 5 feet of each other) of my alarms went off simultaneously. It was the most horrific noise. (I thought my eardrums would burst.) I am not at all mechanical so I tried my husband he was out of the service area…I called my brother. He had me pull the alarms down one by one. When they stopped screaming, I started putting them back up. If the noise started again, I had the problem “child”. the problem child has been down now since Jan… with no repeat performances since. we are planning to replace the problem unit, if we can find a new one.

  10. We have had a problem twice now, where the alarms go off for a few seconds (beeping 3 or 4 times), and then all is quiet for about 3 hours, and then it happens again. It seems as if the last time it happened (several months ago), it was just as the furnace was turning off. Last night when it happened, I think the air conditioner was just turning off. (It’s hard to know for sure, because in each case I was just waking up – thanks to the alarms.) I’ve been searching all over the Internet trying to find out what’s going on, and how to fix it, and even found a manual, but it doesn’t seem to cover this problem.

    Why does this sort of thing always happen at night??!!??

  11. I noticed this string began around 2006/2007, thus it appears that Firex smoke detectors are having consistent problems for some of us. I first was exposed to all 6 Firex smoke detectors simultaneously (and falsely) ringing nonstop. This was a traumatic occurence even in the afternoon, let alone a few days later in the early morning hours (4 or 5 am). It happened three times before I permanently took all of the alarms down from the ceiling, disconnecting their electrical power. Now they are all on battery power and setting on various surfaces around the house. I’m afraid to get out the chair/latter to put them back on the ceiling, and also wonder if they were designed to just run on the battery power.

  12. These false alarms are awful! Did anyone find a set solution? I dont know what to do? I have a two story house, and I woke up at 512am this morning to the high pitch sound of 8 alarms going off at the same time, both up and downstairs! I pulled one off the wall, and unplugged it.
    It seemed to work. 10 minutes later the rest of alarms were at it again!
    I pulled those down too. Now I have no smoke alarms! What a joke!
    I know there is a warranty, the date on mine say July 6, 2004. Has anyone sent theirs in?

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