smoke detector and treadmill

[Pat Schelfhout]

My smoke alarm goes off when I walk on my treadmill. I suspect the treadmill is pulling some amps and the smoke detector doesn't like it. Is there any way of finding where to turn this off?

[rednelb]

REPLACE THE SMOKE DETECTOR. Use a battery powered one. The detector shouldn't go off unless there is smoke (duh) And from experiance having a detector wired to the house is nice, but if the power goes and and there is a fire.. well.. you'll never know until you are a roasted lump of flesh.

[Cflood]

replying to rednelb, Cflood wrote: When we use our treadmill, the smoke detectors go off also. We have plugged in the treadmill in different outlets. The smoke detectors are hard wired with battery backups. We have found only one outlet that it will work without setting off the alarms. Very annoying

[edsamson60062]

The treadmill may be raising sufficient dust to set off the alarm. You might also try the manufacturers instructions for resetting the alarm.

[trader_4]

Where are these various outlets in relation to the treadmill? If they are all near the same smoke detector, I would suggest swapping smoke detectors seeing what happens. If that doesn't work, try another smoke detector, different brand. Possible something is wrong with it and it's being set off too easily.

[Peter]

I wonder if your smoke detector is trying to tell you something about your wiring. My treadmill user's manual (Sole F80) contains the following warning: "WARNING - To reduce the risk of burns, fire, electric shock, or injury to persons, install the treadmill on a flat level surface with access to a nominal 110-volt, 15-amp, grounded outlet with only the treadmill plugged into the circuit. DO NOT USE AN EXTENSION CORD UNLESS IT IS A 14AWG OR BETTER, WITH ONLY ONE OUTLET ON THE END. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISABLE THE GROUNDED PLUG BY USING IMPROPER ADAPTERS, OR IN ANY WAY MODIFY THE CORD SET. A serious shock or fire hazard may result along with computer malfunctions."

You might want to check your outlets to make sure they are wired properly. You might have some wires reversed at their connection to the outlets. There are very inexpensive plug-in testers that will show a different pattern of neon lights if you have an open neutral or hot/ground or hot/neutral wires reversed. If you have a missing neutral, you could see tremendous voltage variations at some outlets when using high wattage appliances. I had a bad neutral in my power company's cable running from the street to my foundation penetration. When I convinced them to check, they agreed and ran a new cable. They own everything up to my foundation so it was their expense. I detected it when after years without problems, my lights dimmed whenever I turned on the toaster oven. Voltage dropped from 117 to 86!

Just a thought.

[micky]

There was a homemoaners post yesterday about treadmill and smoke detector and the guy thought the treadmill stirred up dust, LOL. This is progbably the same treadmill.