Will the home warranty company cover defective smoke detectors? You should call the home warranty company and ask but here are some other options to replace defective smoke detectors.

Q: I bought a house last year and had it remodeled. I have a home warranty plan. The smoke detectors in my home were very old and needed to be replaced. The home warranty plan covered replacing all five detectors for the fee of $75.00.

Eleven months later, and one smoke detector emits a chirping sound that is driving people nuts. This means I got a cheap smoke detectors installed (hardwired units) instead of quality units. All five smoke detectors will need to be replaced. I had a new battery put in the one that’s chirping but it hasn’t made any difference.  

Having an electrician come out here will cost me a small fortune – $375 to be exact – and that’s with my home warranty! I have never had this problem before and I am 79 and a widow. I live in Oklahoma.

Does the Fire Department here offer assistance in installing detectors? I also don’t know if the smoke detectors are wired into my security system. I detest these things. I think I have been taken, again.

Troubleshooting Smoke Detectors Before Calling the Home Warranty Company

A: Wow. While it sounds like you’ve had a tough time, we can’t say definitively that you’ve been taken. Sometimes one smoke detector is bad and sometimes it’s an entire batch.

We don’t know if that’s the case for your (relatively new) smoke detectors. We can tell you that we replace our smoke detectors every five to seven years. They are hard-wired into our electrical system but that doesn’t mean you need an electrician to replace them.

Modern hard-wired smoke detectors don’t have wires in the back that need to be connected to loose wires in the ceiling. Most hard-wired smoke detectors have a connection from the electrical wires to the smoke detectors that engages and disengages. It’s like a plug. This connection makes it simple to replace bad or old smoke detectors with new ones.

They key is knowing what connector your smoke detector has so that you buy a new smoke detector with the same connector. In fact, some smoke detector companies will give you an adapter you can use to connect both commonly used connectors to a new smoke detector. You can look up the brand of the smoke detector and then find a compatible one online or order another one from the company.

Options for Dealing with Faulty Smoke Detectors

What can you do now? Did you contact the home warranty company and see if they would back their work and come back and replace them? That’s the first call you should make.

If your smoke detector is tied into your alarm system, you might see if your alarm company has someone who can inspect and replace the smoke detectors that are failing. You might also be able to obtain replacement smoke detectors from the manufacturer if yours have failed. If they are under warranty, contact the manufacturer and see if it will send you new ones.

You can also buy smoke detectors for between $10 and $40. Higher-priced smoke detectors may include a long-life battery that may last as long as a decade. We’ve also seen reviews of some of these detectors that say that you might be lucky to get 3 or 4 years out of them, but at least you’re not climbing up and changing batteries every year.

We don’t think it’s a great idea for you to get up on a ladder. But perhaps you have a local handy person, child, grandchild or neighbor who can get up on a ladder and help you out.

On a separate note, be sure that the batteries you put into the smoke detectors are new and not past their expiration date. A couple of years ago, Sam put what he thought was a new battery in a smoke detector but quickly learned that it was old when the smoke detector started chirping late at night. (And, why do these smoke detectors always start chirping in the middle of the night?)

You really have fair number of avenues open to you. We hope one of them will pay off. Good luck.

More on home warranties:

What’s Covered Under my New Home Warranty?

What Does a Home Warranty Cover?

Dealing with Home Warranty Claims and Problems