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Finally figured out why my hardwired motion detectors kept false alarming
Took me way too long to realize it wasn't the detectors themselves, but how I was running the wire too close to the HVAC ducts in the ceiling. Last month I had a job at a split-level house in Tacoma where three out of four rooms had motion detectors going off randomly. After swapping the heads twice and wasting an afternoon, I crawled up and noticed the wire was literally resting against the metal ductwork. The blower kicking on must have been inducing enough noise to trip the sensor. I pulled the wire back about 6 inches and zip-tied it to the joist instead. Not a single false alarm since then. Has anyone else run into this with their installs or am I the only one who learned that the hard way?
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morgan_jenkins909d ago
Happens more often than people think with all kinds of electronics, not just security stuff. I've got a buddy who builds custom PCs and he swears he's seen the same thing with hard drives acting up when the power cable runs too close to the fan wiring. Funny how a little distance changes everything, whether it's wires in a ceiling or a phone charger near a speaker. It's like the whole world is just one big game of static cling.
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kim.hannah9d ago
Hardwired motion detectors kept false alarming" - same thing happened to me. Pulling the wire away from ductwork fixed it instantly.
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barbara4299d ago
Honestly I read something similar on a home security forum last week. Someone said their detectors were going off every time the furnace kicked on and it turned out to be the wire running too close to the metal ductwork. The interference from the ductwork basically messed with the signal. Once they moved the wire a few inches away the false alarms stopped completely. Tbh it's wild how something so simple can cause so much trouble. Ngl I'm glad yours was an easy fix too.
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