Installed a panel in a garage and kept getting false alarms for 2 weeks

Kept getting called back to this house off Maple street in Dayton. Every time the temp dropped at night the motion sensor would trip. Turns out I had it aimed right at the furnace vent and the heat blast was setting it off. Finally the homeowner mentioned the furnace kicking on and I felt like an idiot. Anybody else forget to check for HVAC vents near their sensors?

2 comments

2 Comments

wade_perez5d ago

Man that's rough but honestly hilarious in hindsight. Had a buddy who spent three days chasing a false alarm in a warehouse only to find out the cleaning crew was setting it off with the floor buffer every Tuesday night. The motion sensor was picking up the vibration through the concrete floor, not actual motion. Took the homeowner mentioning the weekly cleaning schedule for him to put it together. Made me double check everything after that story, vents included.

emerycarr2d ago

Three days on one sensor glitch seems a bit dramatic to me though. A floor buffer vibrating through concrete sounds like the kind of thing you'd catch after like, one false alarm if you just checked the damn logs. Maybe I'm just lucky but most of my false alarms have been obvious once I actually looked at the sensor placement.