CO alarm going off

[Jethro_uk]

I fitted a battery powered Kidde CO alarm last September. It's in the lounge which has a gas fire.

A couple of times it's sounded - yet the display says "0" and - more importantly - the fire has been off. The controls don't seem to work - I had to pull the batteries out.

First time in October I thought it could be low batteries, so I changed them.

It happened again yesterday. Testing the batteries (3xAA) they all read

1.44V. I replaced them with some brand new ones at 1.61V. So far the alarm has been silent. The self test feature says it's OK.

Have trawled through the manual, and can't find anything about this. Is my suspicion this a faulty unit justified ?

[Lobster]

Might be a no-brainer, but does anyone in the house smoke?

[Martin Brown]

Probably but I think I might get some cheap chemical indicator based CO monitor as a cross check just to be on the safe side. eg

[Jethro_uk]

Not in the house.

[Brian Gaff]

This is what a carbon monoxide alarm? I do hope its not measuring the levels of co2 instead, though this could be handy as you might need one of those if you live in a hermetically sealed box. grin Brian

[Graham.]

Possibly, Possibly not.

How did you test the batteries? Testing them off load is pretty meaningless, the terminal voltage may be much less when delivering current.

The alarm will be designed to alert you with its sounder when the batteries are failing, although usually it sounds intermittently rather than continuously.

[newshound]

ISTR that is how mine died, although it lasted more than a year.

I didn't replace it because by then I had decided I didn't have a CO problem (I seemed to be getting more headaches than usual).