If you need to replace your old smoke detector there’s no need to worry!
It’s pretty easy to do even for beginners and I’ll show you how step by step.
I’m replacing my old ones with the FireX detectors by Kidde.
These are very common in a lot of homes and I have four of them in this rental house.
Now let’s hop on a ladder and remove the old detector with a clockwise twist.
It’s ok to let it hang here but we have to unclip the wire harness by squeezing the
side tabs which will release the detector.
Now using a screwdriver loosen the screws for the ceiling plate.
Don’t take the screws out completely because we’re still going to use them.
When the screws are loose the ceiling plate can be rotated slightly and slipped off the
screws.
At this point turn off the electrical breaker for this detector if you haven’t already.
Now carefully extend the wiring out of the box.
These wires are pretty rigid so you don’t have to worry about breaking them.
Even though I turned off the electricity to this box, I’m still going to check and confirm
that there is no electricity going through these wires.
I just use a simple circuit tester which will light up if there’s still power going through
here.
And because the light didn’t come on on the circuit tester I know these wires are
dead now.
So again I’m using these detectors which are pretty much exactly what was originally
installed in the house.
As I’m unpacking the detector I need to find the new wiring harness.
It’s exactly the same as the old ones and there are three colored wires that match the
existing wiring in the ceiling.
In my situation I probably could’ve used the old harness but I want everything to be
new since I’m making this effort.
To replace the harness it’s best to go one wire at a time.
I’ll unscrew the wire nut for the black wires first.
Then wiggle the black wire from the old harness and it should detach easily.
Now I’m ready to start connecting the new wiring harness.
Just hold up the new black wire to the black wires coming out of the ceiling and then twist
on the wire nut.
Now I’ll move onto the white wires.
Just untwist the wire nut here and disconnect the old white wire like we did before.
And like before take the new white wire and connect it to the ceiling wires with the wire
nut.
Now we’ll do this a third time with the red wire.
As you can see this is not difficult to do.
I’m not an electrical expert but I’ve been able to replace lights and do other simple
electrical work around the house using this method.
It really makes it easy when the wires in the ceiling match the color of the fixture’s
wiring.
That’s not always the case but I lucked out with these FireX smoke detectors.
Once all the wires have been reconnected they can be stuffed back into the ceiling box.
Now it’s time to grab the new detector and remove the mounting plate if it happens to
be attached.
On this plate none of the mounting holes are open so we’ll have to cut the hole locations
that fit the screw configuration in the ceiling box.
These are fairly easy to punch out using a utility knife and cutting along the embossed
holes.
They don’t have to be perfect but don’t make the holes bigger than what is indicated
on the mounting plate.
To attach this to the ceiling box, fish the wire harness through the center hole and line
up the screws in the ceiling.
Once the screw heads are through the holes give the mounting plate a twist.
And now tighten the screws to secure the plate to the ceiling.
Take the new smoke detector and hold it up to the wiring harness.
Line up the pins to the back of the detector and snap the wire connector in place.
Feed the wires into the center hole and attach the new detector to the plate by lining up
tabs and giving a short twist to lock it into place.
At this point, turn on the power to the detector and you should hear a beep.
And on the Kidde smoke detectors, the last step is to pull out the plastic tab to activate
the backup battery.
This green light shows that the detector is powered on and now the job is done!
In all I replaced four smoke detectors in this house and as you can see it’s not difficult
to do.
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