Mains Smoke alarm fault, no power LED, but mains power is present

[Guest Fred]

Hi,

 

I am looking to troubleshoot my smoke alarms.

 

I have a hardwired system of

4x AICO Ei161rc
1x AICO Ei164rc

All 5 alarms are beeping erratically and no LED is showing -> thought the wiring was off, as the expiry is dated Jul 2027.

I had an electrician come over and check for a fault, but there seems to be power going to the alarms, see attached picture. Based on what my tenants (since moved out) have said they failed over time

when pushing the test button all 5 alarms sound.

Could it be that the alarms simply hit their end of life due to dust overloading and need replacing? 

Looking at the Ei3014 and Ei3016 for that.

 

Thanks for your help already.

[green-foam]

To have 5 smoke alarms have no mains indicator light showing does not sound correct. (I would suspect a wiring problem) With no mains the detectors will run on battery power, but when the battery starts to run low, the detectors will beep every 60 seconds, which is what you appear to be having.

I should also point out that the Ei161rc is obsolete. But I would still get each base checked for mains voltage.

[Guest Fred]

Thanks for your response,

I did bring the alarms back home and tried them on my own mains powered system and they all had power.

Seems like there is indeed no power to the mains, despite what the electrician said.

If I don't want to deal with another call out and fixing of this issue, can I just by the relevant RC units of the Aico 600 series?

 

Best,

Fred

[green-foam]

If you really wanted to, then yes you can, but you would either have to install them in new positions or pay for someone to disconnect the cables for the existing smoke alarms, since you wont want them to cause problems in the future.

I would guess the electrician who said the smoke alarms were live is not familiar with the operation of interlinked smoke alarms and only checked to see if he could find 240v. I would suspect a broken neutral wire, which would be cheaper to trace than buying all new detectors. Personally I would want to know why there is no supply, even if I was going to change all the smoke alarms

[Frederic Weil]

Thanks again.

Shouldn't I be able to turn off the circuit and remove the alarm base myself, then terminate the cables using a screw terminal of sorts for all 5 alarms?

 

Then attache new base and alarm ontop?

I know that I will still be with a mains alarm that has no use. Would this potentially fail a future EICR?

 

Best,
Fred 

 

[green-foam]

3 hours ago, Frederic Weil said:

Shouldn't I be able to turn off the circuit and remove the alarm base myself, then terminate the cables using a screw terminal of sorts for all 5 alarms?

If you are confident to do so, then yes. But bear in mind, in an ideal world smoke alarms should be connected to the lighting circuit, not on their own MCB, also you will need a means of proving that the cables are indeed dead.

That said, you might even find the reason why the existing smoke alarms do not work, I still suspect a broken neutral.

An EICR is only to check the condition of the existing wiring, if the wiring does nothing, there is no need to check it any further.