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Review on BRK SC7010BV First Alert Hardwired Photoelectric Smoke and CO Detector with Voice Alerts by Jeff Jordan

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Continuous false alarm

Two separate versions of this model gave false alarms at 2am when the windows were open during a heat wave and at 10am when closed during the same heat; and it couldn't be easily reset unless you turned off the power, removed the batteries, put them back in place, and ran the unit through a test procedure. Even after a restart it went off again. Both were installed by an electrician in a location where the Kidde alarm we replaced had not raised a false alarm in over a decade. Consumer Reports looked at a similar model and found the downside: it's too sensitive. Right. It's ignited by small summer dust particles and even smoke from California wildfires hundreds of miles south of here. First Alert's standard solution is to conclude that a device that consistently issues erroneous alerts must be in the wrong place. In our case, moving the seat would require rewiring in the ceiling of the room in question, and this has been a convenient spot for another model for many years. If you disable one, the other two will stop working on the same circuit in other rooms. An electrician has verified that this circuit has the correct voltage and is free of "noise". So we put on the dust cover and see if it survives the night when the weather changes and the windows are always closed. Too sensitive - the wrong indicator of a fire alarm. It drives people crazy and they tend to disable this thing instead of fixing bugs. Not good for consumer safety. Too bad we switched from Kidde.

Pros
  • Rugged construction
Cons
  • Available in white only