Awake to Smoke Detectors!

[duststang]

A great way to wake up thinking the freakin house is on fire!! What the heck is happening? Everyone is sleeping and around 4am every smoke detector in the house start going off for a few seconds then stops. I wake up and ask my wife if I was dreaming or were they actually going off? She tells me to go check it out. I walk into the kids rooms and they start going off again for a few seconds and stopped. So now the kids are awake and freaking out. So I start searching the entire house checking everything possible and the alarms start going off again for a few seconds. I am getting very aggravated at this point and my wife is telling me that we might need to be calling the fire department? I cannot find anything no smoke, fire or fumes and the gas to the furnace turned off. I start back upstairs and they start going off again for a few seconds. I am confused and not even sure if just one of them is the culprit causing this or all of them. The smoke detectors went off 4 times between 4am and 6am. WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING? They have not went off any more since 6am. These smoke detectors are wired and have batteries. Usually when the batteries go bad they will chirp. Has anyone ever experienced this before? I am replacing batteries but don’t think this would be the cause, they all show green lights?

[Steves LX]

A great way to wake up thinking the freakin house is on fire!! What the heck is happening? Everyone is sleeping and around 4am every smoke detector in the house start going off for a few seconds then stops. I wake up and ask my wife if I was dreaming or were they actually going off? She tells me to go check it out. I walk into the kids rooms and they start going off again for a few seconds and stopped. So now the kids are awake and freaking out. So I start searching the entire house checking everything possible and the alarms start going off again for a few seconds. I am getting very aggravated at this point and my wife is telling me that we might need to be calling the fire department? I cannot find anything no smoke, fire or fumes and the gas to the furnace turned off. I start back upstairs and they start going off again for a few seconds. I am confused and not even sure if just one of them is the culprit causing this or all of them. The smoke detectors went off 4 times between 4am and 6am. WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING? They have not went off any more since 6am. These smoke detectors are wired and have batteries. Usually when the batteries go bad they will chirp. Has anyone ever experienced this before? I am replacing batteries but don’t think this would be the cause, they all show green lights?



Have you tried reseting all the detectors? They may need to be cleaned as well. To reset them just hold down the button on them for 20 seconds or so. You should do this after you replace the batteries as well. I would get a can of compressed air and clean them out as well.

[Blackballed]

Dust can make them malfunction. Change all the batteries and get some caned air and blow them out. If that dosent work you have a faulty detector. Hope that helps.

[Stang88]

Also, make sure your fire alarms don't double as a carbon monoxide detector.

[Blackballed]

What Steve said.LOL Effing laggy computer.

[Steves LX]

Not sure how old these detectors are but you may have the first generation of hard wired smoke detectors. The first generation smoke detectors had batteries that where built in and cannot be replaced. The batteries assured that the detectors would work when the power was off. However after a number of years the batteries wore out and when they did the alarm went off to signal that the detector no longer had backup power.

The only thing that can be done now is to replace them. The newer hard wired detectors have replaceable batteries so this is no longer a problem.

One funny thing though rather annoying is that if several detectors were installed in a house at the same time they will often burnout at the same time and all go off at once.

[furiouslyfaster]

That sounds like the problem. Dang Steve you sure do know your fire extinguishers lol

[Dirtyd0g]

I wouldn't be surprised if this liquid air we are breathing right now didn't play a role as well. I have had steam from the shower set off certain detectors, this air is like shower steam right now.
Alan

[inferno50]

How many were going off. I can't see all the batteries going bad at the same time

[Black92LX]

Since they are hard wired they most likely are all hard wired together. Therefore if one goes off they all will.

Possibility it a slight power surge. We had ours go off one night and yes it's a very scary time when you are awoken from a dead sleep and all your smoke alarms are going off.
I check every room went to the attic found nothing. Have an electric house with no gas so know that Co2 is not the problem.

Finally quit and went to bed, started talking to two neighbors and they had the same thing the same night about the same time.

[duststang]

yeah it was crazy, there was 5 going off upstairs and down stairs. No issues since we did have the windows open so I figured might have something to do with the weather? I know Co2 wasnt issue because I turn it off at the furance in the spring time. clean them havent replaced batteries yet. boogie woogie !!!!!

[gtbadboy]

I had to clean them. They were about 8 years old at the time.

[Xowner]

Throw them in the trash! Clean them? WTH is your familys lives worth the few bucks you saved to clean them???

[Katmandu]

GHOSTS !!!! :eek:

[duststang]

GHOSTS !!!! :eek:

yeah at the time I was wondering!!
I think i am going to replace all of them just to be safe.

[went12s]

Also, make sure your fire alarms don't double as a carbon monoxide detector.

I was thinking about carbon monoxide.