Charge 3 recording extra floors

[Curling45]

My Charge 3 tracks stairs I have not climbed. I have a drop foot and step down hard with my left foot but not sure if that is the reason. I would like to turn that off but it won’t let me. Any suggestions? I think I’m double dipping either the calories. I only walk on the treadmill.

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[Eg2019]

I have recently got a charge 3. I up graded from a charge 2. My old charge only counted maybe 10 floors a day. I do the same work with the charge 3 and it counts 60 floors. One day it said I did 130 floors.   

I work retail and I do bend over a lot to pick things up. I think this is what it is counting as floors. I have restarted it. I also returned one to see if it was the particular charge I had .  This one does the same as the one I returned

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[AlejandraFitbit]

A warm welcome to the Community @Curling45.

Your device may give you credit for extra floors for a variety of reasons. Devices may track floors while doing everyday tasks such as opening doors, driving, or riding elevators or escalators, or from abrupt weather and atmospheric pressure changes Exposure to excess moisture can also result in extra floors.

If you want to remove floors from your account, I recommend following the instructions provided in the help article: How do I edit or delete Fitbit data and activities?.

Let me know how it goes. 

[MarreFitbit]

Welcome to the Community Forums @Eg2019! Thanks for already restarting your Charge 3. 

Charge 3 (and Fitbit devices) may track floors while doing everyday tasks such as opening doors, driving, or riding elevators or escalators, or from abrupt weather and atmospheric pressure changes, exposure to excess moisture can also result in extra floors. I recommend wearing your device loosely during exercise.

Keep in mind that if you want to remove floors from your account, follow the instructions provide in the help article: How do I edit or delete Fitbit data and activities?

Let me know if you need further assistance.

[Curling45]

Thanks for responding but it tracks the stairs
while I am walking at the gym. I have 0 stairs
(floors) climbed and when I am done walking
I have 99 stairs (floors) climbed. I’m thinking
my Calories are wrong because of this. Since
I started using the Fitbit alpha last year in June I have lost 60 lbs. I rely on this information being somewhat accurate. I replaced it with the Fitbit 3 because I want to track swimming. Can you please help me solve this? It would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Curling45
Sent from my iPhone

[Parkersspace2]

Hey guys, I have owned the alta for 2+ years, I got an inspire to track swimming for mothers day ), nice of hubby but it was totally wonkers; recorded swims when I put away laundry almost never auto tracked and I have two accounts now so I can wear 2 fitbits at once and see how it's doing comparatively to my very accurate alta HR.  So the charge is doing pretty good but there's two things it's off on and maybe you can give me a real answer that might help and yes, I restarted, i'm not new to fitbit.

1.  It is recording stairs like mad.  I see you have a very long thread of this being an issue to all since May or so, it's marked solved but it's really not solved in it so maybe someone has some new insight on how to get that to adjust or what might be causing it or maybe Fitbit is going to work on that?

2,  Second, It auto tracks my bike rides and aerobic workout pretty close to my alta (gave me a few extra minutes on them here and there but Heart rate and calorie burn are pretty close, but it never seems to record my plain ordinary walks.  It has only record me on a walk once and it gave me 11 minutes where my alta gave me the proper 18 minutes.  Maybe there is something I could try to get the walking auto tracking better?

[duaneo69]

I am having the same problem, but not that bad.  You must be in REALLY good shape! 🙂 

Also, I have noticed it mainly only occurs when I wear it on my dominant hand (I do change the setting to dominant in the app).  I've had it for many months now so I am not a total noob.

Also, I seem to walk around 500 steps in my sleep too.

Anyone have any ideas to fix these? I've tried both hands and both settings for the sleep sensitivity.

[Parkersspace]

Oh thanks.  I wondered if switching it from my dominant hand might help with both.  I'll be doing that tomorrow.  I have the alta on my left where I have kept it most of the two years and the Charge on my right/dominant.  I was thinking possibly the walks don't pick up as it thinks I should more more with my dominant hand, but I'm really not sure about the floors I'm supposedly climbing, i live in a ranch home.  I have been out looking at model homes but I'm looking at ranch homes to move to.  The day i did 22 floors I looked at one with an upstairs, the day I did 80 I didn't look at any two story homes, they were all ranch style.

[sko_tang]

I wear my Charge 3 SE on my left wrist but set it as dominant even though I’m right-handed to help stop it giving too many “extra” steps.

Charge 3 over-counting floors when there is no altitude or atmospheric change is well-documented in different topics / threads.  Unfortunately moderators have not escalated the issue and Fitbit has never even acknowledged having such an issue.  There are many many unhappy customers already; I’m afraid you won’t be the last one.

[Windyfairy]

I’m new to the charge 3. I noticed, last week, that it had logged a ridiculous amount of flights of stairs, like 70-90, nearly every day. I knew I hadn’t climbed that many, but we were at Disney, so I assumed that it was from the rides. However, it’s still over reporting the number of stairs I climb by a factor of three. What’s the fix for this?

[duaneo69]

I wore my Charge 3 on my dominant hand a little looser last night and woke up with no stairs.  Yay!

Now, if I wouldn't get that rash.  I rinse it off after nearly every workout and take it off regularly when on the computer or Tv.

[Parkersspace · Accepted solution]

Interesting about wearing it looser thought I might need it tighter, but for today i traded the Alta HR to my dominant hand and Charge 3 to non dominant.  So far today it says two floors climbed, should be 0, but the steps are little less than the alta shows, rest is pretty close again, and 2 floors is much better than 20 floors for 0.  I think overall i might track more accurately on the non dominant hand because I really use both hands a lot and possibly it expects me to use my dominant hand more.  I'll see if the auto tracking picks up a walk later today and how it does with my bike ride when i get out and get it done too.

[Stanley_m]

I haven't generally walked more then 5 floors in any day. I know the count has been wrong and have ignored it.  I did notice that the errors keep increasing.  It started out I was not hitting my 5 floors goals. Now the weekly number of floors is getting close to 1000.  The daily numbers are pretty random but the weekly totals are very much trending upwards almost every week being well above previous.  Please explain.

[Laczay]

Similar experience. Recently the number of floors climbed are much more without real reason...

[Parkersspace]

Well took me over an hour but paired the Charge 3 to my main account and placed it on my non-dominant hand.  since waking this morning i put in some laundry, poured to mugs of coffee, one for me and my SO, brushed my teeth, washed my face and lay back down to watch my GMA.  In that time I somehow managed to do a flight of stairs in my ranch home.

[pjb_1962]

So, yesterday my Charge3 said I climbed 21 flights of stairs. In reality it was about 12. Does it consider hills on an outdoor walk to be "floors"? That's the only thing I can think of here!

[Laczay]

What I wrote about have been the mysteries, not the events when I went up to the hills by bus and Charge 3 counted 15-20 floors... The program certainly takes theese barometer changes as floors by using elevator.
I have written about overcounts without any proper reason.

[pjb_1962]

So I'm a new user, and wasn't sure that hills were counted as flights of stairs. Makes sense I guess, but I wasn't sure if it was correct.

[Mraysbrook]

Charge 3 is counts flights of stairs even when I stand up from the couch or dinner table.  My barometer in my house hasn’t changed and I’ve restarted my Fitbit but nothing has changed and is recording 30-40 flights on average per day.  Seems to have started after an updated took place as this wasn’t always the case when I first got the charge 3 when it was released...

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[DavideFitbit]

Hello @Windyfairy, welcome to the Community forums. 

I'm sorry to see that you've been having trouble with the extra stairs being recorded. Your device is designed to detect pressure changes based on elevation gain, but other types of pressure changes, such as a gust of wind, a weather change, or opening a door, can occasionally cause your device to register extra floors. Your device registers 1 floor when you climb about 10 feet, which is the average between residential and commercial floor heights. If you climb long staircases you may find that the floor count on your device doesn’t match the number of floors you climbed when the staircase is taller than 10 feet.

It is also possible that the device will count some stairs while performing other activities, but the number should not be exaggerated. Remember the device tries to give you credit for all movements throughout the day.  You can find more information in this article: How accurate are Fitbit devices?

If you continue to experience any trouble with too many floors being recorded, please try to perform a restart following these steps. They check if you continue to experience the same behavior. 

Let me know if you have further questions.