Hello everybody,
New to this forum here. I have a question that's been baffling me for quite sometime. A few months ago, a couple of smoke detectors in my house stopped working at different times; one downstairs and one upstairs. They started chirping and I replaced the 9V batteries. However, after replacing the batteries, I noticed that the continuous green light was not there anymore, so the smoke detectors had been working with battery power only-- or else I assumed. I then replaced the smoke detectors with new ones but with the same result: no AC power to either one of them. Next, I went to grab my multimeter and my portable AC power detector to check the electric lines and connections and both showed that there was absolutely no AC power running through the lines on both of them! The weird thing is that at some point all of my smoke detectors were working fine and one day, just out of the blue, no AC power on both of them! The rest of the smoke detectors in my home (all three of them) are working just fine (i.e., I do see the continuous green light on on all of them). I did check and rechecked my connections (neutral, hot, and serial--yellow) from the line to the new detectors and they're all fine.
Anyway, any guesses as to what I might be missing here? All of the smoke detectors are connected to a dedicated (15 amp) trip switch in the AC power box in my garage, so I'm assuming they're all connected in series, but could they be connected in parallel somehow? Would this be normal and perhaps the cause of those two faulty smoke detectors??
So sorry for the long message. I hope there's somebody out there with some answers before I had to call an electrician. Thank you so much! Stay safe everyone!
New to this forum here. I have a question that's been baffling me for quite sometime. A few months ago, a couple of smoke detectors in my house stopped working at different times; one downstairs and one upstairs. They started chirping and I replaced the 9V batteries. However, after replacing the batteries, I noticed that the continuous green light was not there anymore, so the smoke detectors had been working with battery power only-- or else I assumed. I then replaced the smoke detectors with new ones but with the same result: no AC power to either one of them. Next, I went to grab my multimeter and my portable AC power detector to check the electric lines and connections and both showed that there was absolutely no AC power running through the lines on both of them! The weird thing is that at some point all of my smoke detectors were working fine and one day, just out of the blue, no AC power on both of them! The rest of the smoke detectors in my home (all three of them) are working just fine (i.e., I do see the continuous green light on on all of them). I did check and rechecked my connections (neutral, hot, and serial--yellow) from the line to the new detectors and they're all fine.
Anyway, any guesses as to what I might be missing here? All of the smoke detectors are connected to a dedicated (15 amp) trip switch in the AC power box in my garage, so I'm assuming they're all connected in series, but could they be connected in parallel somehow? Would this be normal and perhaps the cause of those two faulty smoke detectors??
So sorry for the long message. I hope there's somebody out there with some answers before I had to call an electrician. Thank you so much! Stay safe everyone!
