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Have you had your home more than ten years? If so, common advice is to replace the smoke detector. For me, I cannot find any model that comes close to fitting the receptacle/wiring and really haven't had time to rewire and resize the wall mounting.
Get a new model and install it yourself. If you do not know how to do that, then call an electrician to install it for you.
That would be an easy thing to do, so the charge will be minimal. (Around here everyone charges $100 minimum just to show up.)
Note if you do not know what type of smoke detector to install, also have the electrician provide it for you or tell you what replacement brand/model to buy.
The harness to connect the smoke detector is not universal, you must change out the harness yourself. All new hardwired smoke detectors should include the proper harness to use with it. Installing the new harness is quite easy, you just have to unscrew the twist-on connectors from the existing harness to the house wiring, and then attach the new harness with the twist-on connectors (in addition to turning off the power for them on the panel). Obviously black connects to black and white connects to white. The third wire is an interconnect wire and is typically either red, orange, or yellow; note that the color may not be the same as your house wiring. If there is a ground wire present in the junction box, DO NOT connect the interconnect wire to ground (smoke detectors do not normally have a ground wire).
I guess we were fortunate in replacing all of our detectors: the connections worked or it was still made. No electrician was needed.
One piece of advice though: detectors contain some kind of radioactive material and should not just be tossed in the trash. Some places will let you ship them back for disposal. Our local recycling center took ours as a hazardous material.
Anybody ever have a hardwired detector line lose power? I have a hardwired system with multiple detectors on it, but one has lost AC power to it's supply. Tested with multi-meter; no juice. Battery is good in the detector, all outlets in that BR work. It's a mystery....
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