Installing and Wiring Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detectors / Alarms

Welcome back guys, it's the tightwad and today I'm going to be replacing my smoke detector with a new Smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and the reason why I'm replacing it is because my existing Smoke detector is expired. Yes, they do expire so to determine if your Smoke detector is expired You can remove it from the ceiling by twisting counterclockwise Mine has a little squeeze clip I squeeze in on each side and removes this whole piece from the back of the smoke detector So once you get your smoke detector removed, you should see a date if the contractor installed them mine says September 4th 2008 is when it was installed and right beside it. You see it says replace in 10 years So if your home is more than 10 years old, you probably need to go ahead and replace your smoke detectors You may get lucky and this clip may match the new smoke detector you bought if it does simply plug this in But mine has a different type of wired connection. So I'm gonna have to replace this little tail so before we move any further, we're going to disconnect the power by going to the breaker box and Finding the one for this area of the house and turning it off and then we'll verify that the power is off with our voltage meter Mounting brackets typically just have two screws holding them on And they can be removed with just a common screwdriver Mine, my particular ones are Phillips head, which is pretty normal I'm gonna loosen the screws just a little bit With my screws loosened I should be able to turn the bracket so that the screws match up with the mounting bracket holes and this whole thing Should come right off Exposing all of the wires up in the junction box so I can now pull all these wires down so that I can work with them a little easier and We have three wires in my house, I have the white wire, which is the common or neutral We have the black which is the hot wire That's where the electricity is flowing and then we have the red and the red wires are how the different smoke detectors in the house Communicate with each other because when one is tripped They all start going off so that everyone can hear that there's an issue going on So I have two tails coming down from the ceiling and then they're connecting in with the tail on My wiring unit for my smoke detector So right now I want to use my multimeter to check and see if I still have power at this outlet I've turned off all the power upstairs because it did not indicate which one of My breakers ran to the hallway where I'm currently working so to be safe, I turned off all the upstairs power, but I still want to test using my multimeter and Anytime you're testing inside the house, that's AC volts and I'm gonna go to 200 AC volts You need to be above 120. So any setting above 120 will work. So I have it set to 200 AC volts so I'm going to unscrew the wire nuts carefully from the white to expose the wires and The same from the black making sure they don't touch each other and then I will touch one lead to each of these wires and Ensure that I still have a zero reading on my multimeter So I know the power is off now and it is safe to work on this outlet So now that I've ensured the power is off I'm gonna go ahead and remove the last wire nut from the communication line And then I'm gonna untwist all of my pairs to remove this old tail It's now as simple as matching your colors. So I'm gonna go White to white and install my wire nut black to black You want to wrap the wires? clockwise Otherwise, the wire nut will just unwrap them since you tighten the wire nut clockwise as well And then my last one in this case mine is orange and the wires and the ceiling are Red, but your colored wire is your communication line I'm gonna screw the wire nut down on those and I can tuck all three of those connections Back up into the junction box. So the next step is to install our mounting bracket Your new mounting bracket should fit right where the old one was So hopefully the screws still line up and hopefully it's the same size. So you don't have to do any painting If you do have to paint I recommend you paint prior to Installing the new mounting bracket so that you don't have to take it back down to paint around it Make sure the screws are snug, but don't screw them in so hard that they break the plastic Just give it a little twist and see if it spins And now we're ready to install our unit The back of my new alarms actually has a place to write the date that they were installed I think the month and the year is sufficient But do this so that the next tenant or homeowner Will know when it's time or if the smoke detectors have been replaced within the last 10 years So now I just plug it in To the harness we installed you should hear it click or snap into place Push your wires up inside if needed Rotate it counterclockwise Until it stops moving if your new smoke detector comes with this battery guard Leave it in until you've got everything connected So that when you do your testing, you know that it's running on the power from the home and not the power from the battery So it's always a good idea to test it while this is still inserted And once you know, it's fully functioning Then you can pull that tab and activate the battery backup system for your smoke detector With the new smoke detector installed and our battery tab still in place I'm gonna push the button to test that series of alarms It lets me know that this smoke detector is installed properly and hardwired to my system So now I can remove this battery lock From the device which activates the battery and the chirping should go away this alarm set off all the other alarms in the house and Then it gave a series of four beeps a pause and four more beats to let me know that we're good to go Each type of alarm has its own series of beeps So make sure you read your installation manual to see what kind of codes you're shitting it I hope you found this video helpful. If you did give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel You can find links to all the materials I used in this installation in the description below Click any of the videos showing on the screen now and they'll open right up on your device If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section. I hope you guys have a great day