Quell Ionsiation Smoke Alarm Q945

An abominable and dangerous product – We bought 7 of these at Bunnings on the assumption that at $50 each, they were the best. They’re not. They each go off somewhere between 3 to 10 times a week, except when there’s an actual fire. I emailed Quell, and this bloke who was probably their in-house electrical engineer or quantum physicist wrote back to tell me “ITS BECAUSE OF INSECTS!!!”

Roger that. Last night one of the alarms went off 4 times (as mentioned we have 7 alarms, so the insects were being selective). The hush button didn’t work at first so I managed to stop the God awful racket by blowing into the hole. But the hush decided to tell us about half an hour later in a seductive lady’s voice in the dead quiet of night, that hush was now deactivated (that’s what you’re paying $50 for folks).

So, this morning the alarm went off again, I beat the crap out of it with my hammer, it broke into 100 pieces, and I couldn’t believe it - there were no insects inside.

Anyway, this morning I took down my 6 remaining alarms and had this moment akin to clearing a house full of funnel web nests, when I asked my wife if I had got all the alarms.

This product stinks, and it’s more dangerous than fires it’s supposed to save you from where you will be frequently up a ladder in the dead of night trying to shut the bloody things up.

Driving me insane – We have three of these in our small home. When there is no visible smoke or dust or particles of any kind whatsoever, they go off...usually when I am online with a client trying to have a conference call. On the one occasion that our fireplace spewed out plumes of smoke filling the house, it didn't make a peep. Dreadful waste of money on what was close to the most expensive option on the shelf.

Rubbish - Stay Away – I have just checked my Quell ionisation smoke alarms that I have had for less than 2 years...they all fail the test button test even with fresh batteries... Bad Product - stay away from Quell. Rubbish.

Quell Ionisation Smoke Alarm Q945 – I moved into a new house in April 2015 and brought 7 new smoke alarms from Bunnings, all the exact same: Quell Ionisation Smoke Alarm (Model Q945) with a manufacture date of January 2015. I checked them regularly and all worked until this month (about 3 1/2 years later) when 3 of them completely failed the push button test. Seem to be completely dead, one makes a tiny little "tick tick" noise but that's it.

I swapped fresh batteries, but no difference. There was no warning beep (like you get with batteries as they start to go flat). I just shows that you must test these things regularly (monthly) as they can fail suddenly and your family's life could be on the line.

The other 4 work OK at the moment, but will update this post if they fail anytime soon.