I’ve always said I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t have a smoke alarm but I’m beginning to understand it! Not really, I’d never not have smoke alarms. But . . remember right before Vince got here when the smoke alarm in the hallway outside our bedroom started beeping during the night? I couldn’t reach it with the regular ladder so I closed the bedroom door and spent the rest of the night trying to sleep with a screeching smoke alarm just outside the door. Jeremy came over the next morning to change the battery but that didn’t help. Since it was an electric smoke alarm, Jeremy took it down til Vince got here and could deal with it. That’s when we noticed that the electric smoke alarms were almost 20 years old and ordered 6 new ones. We have a combination of electric and the kind that run solely off batteries. All the electric ones have batteries too. Every smoke alarm in this house got a new battery 1-1/2 months ago.
Saturday we had been out and when we got home, I walked in the house first and could hear a smoke alarm beeping. Weird! I walked toward the sound and I thought it was the smoke alarm in the hall – the one just outside our bedroom door. It had beeped twice before I got to it and it never beeped again. I told Vince. He didn’t hear it so . . in his mind it had fixed itself . . til last night. Just before 5 this morning, it started beeping again. Vince got up and I said “What are you going to do?” because he would have to bring in the extra tall ladder and I always like to help him so the back end of it doesn’t hit a wall while turning a corner. He said “I’m going to close the door!” I thought . . been there, done that . . it isn’t going to help but he closed the door, got back in bed and said “Well, that didn’t help much!” After about 15 minutes of chirping, it stopped again. But, we were both awake!
There was a package deal when Vince ordered them – less expensive to buy six but we only needed five so we have an extra one. He’ll change it out today . . I hope.
Lynn Humphreys says
Ours did that a few weeks ago , our Building Code for new housing requires that they be wired together so when one goes off they all go off – not nice . The batteries had all been changed about 2 months prior. They went off three times in about a half hour and then quit. Reading info it said that dust can cause this , that something going past the sensor like dust can set them off. You could vaccuum the sensor but … We haven’t done anything so far and it is still silent ( touch wood ) . New technology sometimes is questionable – the sound of 7 or 8 smoke alarms going off at once is an awful sound , thank goodness we don’t have a pet , they would go beserk .
Judy Laquidara says
Ours must not be wired together. There’s one at the bottom of the stairs that when Vince was replacing the hard wired alarms, it wasn’t working and he figured out there’s no power in those wires so he just stuck up a battery powered alarm. For our bedrooms, there’s a short hallway with three bedrooms off it. All three bedrooms have smoke alarms and the hallway has one. That’s a bit overkill but Jeremy said the rules when the house was built was that there had to be one in the “common area” outside the bedroom and inside each bedroom. There are 6 alarms on the main level and at leat 5, maybe 6 in the basement.
I definitely think the smoke alarms are needed and am thankful we have them bu they can surely be a pain.
Sara Fridley says
We have one smoke alarm in a hallway that has NEVER worked properly. The whole system is wired together, and this one just keeps setting off the whole bunch. No matter how many new batteries and new alarms we’ve put there. So it is just missing, and all of the rest seem to work fine – which we learned one day when Dave was grilling and forgot a window was open near the grill. LOL
JustGail says
I *hate* the wired smoke alarms too. Why it is that the spiders in the garage or attic decide to crawl through at 2am and set the blasted things off?! Worse is trying to figure out which one it is, no obvious “I’m not happy” indicator on them. We’re expected to stand there and try to line up a tiny hole with a tiny light and watch for a blink every 30 seconds or some such thing. And needing a long ladder and backing the car out of the garage if it’s that one. We did have one go bad and had to be replaced, as it was setting them all off. When we replace ours, I will be using them for target practice, with a hammer. Though I would consider learning to shoot just for this.
Judy Laquidara says
I’m with you, especially when so many are close together and you can’t figure out which one is causing the problem.
montanaclarks says
We ditched our wired smoke detectors and went with the newer 10 year smoke detectors. You install them, they last for ten years–no changing batteries every year, no finding a ladder every time the dang things start chirping! We got some of ours at Costco and the others at Home Depot. And yes Vince, they are more expensive but my sleep is worth it! And Emmi HATES those chirping things–they drive her crazy!
Judy Laquidara says
The problem we have is that the holes in the ceiling aren’t the same so it’s better for us to keep replacing these than to have to have so many ceilings patched.
Donna Minter says
Ours all run on batteries. Only recently has one gone off because of low battery that wasn’t in the middle of the night. What is up with that?
Judy Laquidara says
That’s weird. I think ours that started going off on Saturday during the day was the first time I’d ever had one go off during the day.