SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20240407-E872D-2147339906. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: First Alert BRK 3120B (Smoke Detectors Model number BRK 3120B). Incident: I purchased First Alert Smoke detectors Model BRK 3120B in March 2022. These are hard-wired smoke detectors, installed into a modern, clean home. The units keep giving false alarms. I have had over 20 false alarms in the past 2 years since installing. The company keeps giving me instructions to clean the units every few weeks in order to avoid false alarms and avoiding addressing the issue. They finally offered to replace the units, which is in process. I see in online reviews that that I am not alone with false alarms with this particular model. Repeated false alarms are dangerous in that the user begins to ignore the alarm. We've disconnected alarms in certain rooms with repeated false alarms and when they go off in the middle of the night, we do not even get up to check for fire anymore. I feels that others are probably doing the same thing and a real fire could be ignored. The company does not seem to care or want to address the issue. They just tell me to keep cleaning them with compressed air and the vacuum cleaner, which, quite honestly, is very impractical given that these are mounted on the ceiling.