Warning: A brand new smoke detector triggered a false alarm and got the fire department called

This happened Tuesday at a house in the Maplewood area. I installed a whole new system, everything tested fine, and I left. Got a call an hour later from the homeowner saying the fire trucks were outside. Rushed back, and the brand new photoelectric smoke in the kitchen was going off. No smoke, no steam, nothing. The debate I'm having with myself is about pre-installation checks. One side says you can't predict a faulty unit straight from the box, and testing it with the canned smoke is enough. The other side says we should be doing a longer 'burn-in' test on site, maybe leaving the system in test mode for a while before we hand it over, even though that adds time to every job. What's your standard procedure to catch a dud before it causes a panic?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylor.sean10h ago

Why waste time on a burn-in when a simple test catches most problems?

the_grace10h ago

But what if that simple test misses the dud?

grace894h ago

Exactly, that's the whole point. A burn-in finds those weird late-stage failures a quick test would miss. Sean's method might save time now, but it could cost more later.