My smoke detector is possessed. Last night, about 4:00am, while I was lying in bed completely asleep, it decided to go off. *BEEP BEEP BEEP* and then nothing. I'm fearing the worst: electrical fire, an explosion of some kind... so I crawl out of bed, across my floor, and I test the back of my bedroom door. Cold. I open the door slowly and sniff intently. I have one of the strongest senses of smell of anyone I know (a curse at times), and I could not smell any smoke. Nothing. I couldn't smell anything good or bad or any smell. That's how I like my apartment: no smells. Since the alarm had gone off and stopped on it's own, I went back to bed. Three minutes later (just as my eyes closed again), *BEEP BEEP* and then nothing. Bloody Hell! I panicked. Why would the alarm be going off? I sat out in the living room and waited ten minutes before giving up. I came in to my bedroom to look up emergency numbers for the apartment complex (don't have any), for Corvallis Fire Department (the non-emergency line... where can I get that number?)... and it did it's little *BEEP BEEP* thing again. Oh, I lost it. I was going straight for the National Guard's number!
In the end, I called my parents to see if they knew what would make a smoke detector go off if nothing was on fire. I felt all the walls in my apartment to make sure nothing was warm behind them. The oven hadn't been on since 9am, and I NEVER burn candles. My parents didn't appreciate the 4:30am phone call.
As I sit here, five hours later, exhausted and frustrated, I worry. I'm an incredibly fire-conscious person, especially since I live "attached" to other people. I really don't like it when my smoke detector (which doesn't use batteries--it's hard-wired) starts going off. Scares the shit out of me.
If you know any possible causes for a false alarm, please comment. I don't want this to happen again.
55 comments:
The first thing I would do is replace the battery and see what happens. 99% of the time that solves it. Especially if there's no smoke or fire or anything around. Oven perhaps? But not at 4 in the morning. That's a bad battery.
Or a poltergeist. ;-)
Thanks for such a quick comment! The smoke detectors are hard-wired and do not use batteries. That was my first thought.
I'm voting poltergeist. Because I don't know what else it could be!
Even hard-wired detectors should have batteries. What happens if the power goes out and there's a fire? You can't expect the poltergeist to help out. What if he/she is away at say a poltergeist convention? Or visiting their poltergeist parents?
Hmmm.... Could be a bad sensor or something like that.
A weak battery will go off when it is cold.
Definitely replace the back up battery. Also, do you ever have any creepy crawlies in your house? They can get into the alarm and make it beep as well. I was more used to it in Texas than here, but it does happen.
I agree with oregonian37, smoke detectors work by emitting beta particles of radiation and then detecting them with a detector built in. If one of these particles fails to reach the detector (either by smoking blocking it or a creepy crawly) or the the particle is not detected then the fire alarm will go off.
My advice, open the alarm up, replace the backup battery, check the hard wires and the circuits and check for dust or small creatures in there. =)
good luck with the creepy critters, sis!
MUAHAHAHA!!
It's 2:@2am (EST) and the same thing is happening here...two alarm double stroke beeps and then nothing....
May need to start sleeping in depends if this keeps up!
Wondering if your's remedied itself or if a creepy crawly or backup battery was to blame....
My apartment managers switched out the faulty one for a new one. I haven't heard a peep out of it since. The new one is hard-wired with a back-up battery as well.
This has been helpful to read, since we were up at 3 a.m. last night with the interconnected alarms going off.
Does anyone know how to disconnect the back up battery from the unit? Does it pull out straight or screw out? Thanks.
I was so angry when mine went off... I eneded up banging the alarm with my hammer, which made the beep-beeping even louder! I then ripped the wires out and called my apartment manager the next day. I told her it was like that when we moved in... ha HA
Alarm - o
me - 1
Smoke detectors do not know the difference between smoke and condensation. If near a shower, dishwasher or anything else that may produce steam or condensation, it will set it off.
Try getting a stronger exhaust fan, and air conditioning/ dehumidifier to remove moisture in the air.
Same thing happened to me turned out to be a dirty smoke detector (not visibly dirty). So I cleaned with air compressor and worked fine. Give it a try!
Holy Cheeses! This has been really helpful. Damn smoke alarm woke me up at 4am this morning. I was completely FREAKED OUT! No fire anywhere. No sign of smoke. Checked entire house. I guess it's time to switch up the batteries.
PHEW!!!
This has been really helpful. For the past 2days only 1 of my alarms has been bleeping every few minutes and always after 1am! I was so freaked out as I have electric alarms, I didn't realise they have a back up battery! Does anyone know if the actual alarm will go off if I don't replace the battery straight away? As I'm too much of a wuss to risk changing it myself & risk setting off the alarms, would rather wait until my partner gets home in the morning & get him to do it!
This page was very helpful. Ours went off three times causing the fire dept to come out. They told us that it needed a new battery. When we put in the new one, the light went from red to green and it hasn't made a sound.
Before they left we asked them if anything else could make it go off randomly. They said the same as most stated above about condensation, dust, bugs, and cold temps possibly being reasons.
If changing batteries doesn't work then try this plan B: Smoke detectors are typically all interconnected. If one has a low battery or is dirty or creepy crawlies nearby OR IS DEFECTIVE, it may cause all of the alarms to go off. The detector usually has a small light on it. Green is good and red is bad. If you are lucky and the "false alarm" goes off for a long enough period that you can see every detector light, the one with the red light is the culprit - (clean it or replace it). I recommend replacing it. This lesson, I learned the hard way and replaced every battery multiple times until finally changing out every detector. Now we sleep peacefully and the light is green without any false alarms.
One of mine went off and really scared us cause my brother in law had a house fire just two weeks ago totally destroying his house. My detector is only two weeks old, i got new ones after the fire. I checked the batteries and it still went off again an hour later so took it down and blew on the openings and a spider crawed out of it. It didn't go off after that. But I still sleep with my wallet & shoes close to me just in case I need to run out .
Thank you all! This page has been very useful.I have had this 'attack' three times now and last night was the worst, it lasted for 3 years. I will make sure to change the battery on one of the detectors which did have a red light.Somebody also suggested that keep the house cooler also helps.
Mine just did this tonight. Frantic I began searching the web to figure out what's wrong. I pulled the battery out of my hardwired fire alarm and exchanged it with the battery in my guitar (inside tuner battery). My guitar says the battery was low. So I'm keeping it in there and leave the fresh one from my guitar in the fire alarm. Hopefully it won't do that again. It's been random for the past couple of months. Tonight I couldn't get it to stay off! Now it seems to be quiet and I'm exhausted! G'night all. Thanks for the tips.
Thanks for all the wonderful tips. This morning 4:00am all four alarms in our house went off at the same time. First, I did not know what whats going on. I thought my computer was malfunctioning (silly me). My 12 year old came downstairs first and told me it was the fire alarms.
But this is the weird thing. We took out the batteries out of all of them... but the incessant noise continued for 2 straight hours. Finally it came to my mind that it could be the extreme cold weather that settled overnight so I turned on the heater. Sure enough in about 20 minutes there was peace and quiet. Finally time to sleep, but not for my 12 year old.. time for school. Thanks again for good advise.
It's 4.05am and my smoke alarm is beeping... randomly.
This happened a couple weeks ago & I said it to my housemate.. who looked at me like I was crazy.. and I just assumed I was dreaming.
It's driving me nuts & nobody else can hear. Grrrrrr.
*Changing battery tomorrow!*
Comment from Jay, many of these smoke alarms have shelf life after which they may not be dependable. It is important to see if the fire alarm has printed date by which it should be replaced.Life is too precious to ignore the manufacturer's recommendations.
This just happened to us last night for the THIRD time!! Started at 11:09pm, right after I started sleeping....then again after 1am, then at 2:15am. It's a helpless feeling. I figured since I didn't get the little "chirp" battery warning that it wasn't the batteries, so I didn't know what to do. Finally, after all 3 of our kids were awake and my wife and I were supremely frustrated, I took all 8 of the smoke detectors down, and put them in a cooler in our garage!!! One beeped allllllll night long. I'm guessing it has a weak batter (coupled with the cold) or a bad sensor (coupled with the cold). Will try again tonight....wish us luck!!!
It is 4:45am and my smoke alarm has just gone off! Checked all the house and no sign of smoke. The temp outside is minus 5 degs and the heating has been off all night, im guessing it was the coldness that triggered it!
Question about the Hardwire units. Where does it open to replace the battery backup LOL I turned it and it came off the cradle but just showed wires. I don't want to break it so I'm not removing the wires. breaker is off...the light in the other one is also red, the one that kept going off - not just chirping - was red too. It is extremely cold here today - much colder than usual so I'm thinking that plays a factor - but I can't leave the breaker off all day, thanks for any help.
wENDY
This was so much help! I was sleeping and all of my smoke detectors went off! They wouldn't stop no matter what I did, there was no fire either. Finally, after about 8 minutes, the thing just stopped. I don't know why, they are interconnected, but their lights for batteries are green too!
i found that it was creepy crawlies. i shook the unit, and two came out. stupid creepy crawlies.
It was happening to me too in a house I just moved into a couple of months ago, it happened 5 times, today being the 5th & this time they didn't stop, 8 of them throughout the house & saying fire! fire! my son was screaming, my dogs howling, I had to call the FD, they came & said it was the battery in 1 of them. I hope he was right. I've never heard of them going off for that, thought it would just chirp...maybe because they're interconnected, I don't know. So all this evening my sons new saying (he's 3) is fire! fire! :o/
My smoke alarm went off at 4:00 this morning. Not a beeping but a shrill consistent noise. I had trouble reaching it bc of the location. Finally got an extention pole and pushed the little button and it went off.Didn't see any little critters. Not sure what to do bc it is hard wired, not battery operated. Ironically it hasn't gone off when I have smoked up the kitchen! Have to wait until my husnabd gets back to check it bc I can't reach it without a ladder.
I am glad I found this blog here. My fire alarm went off twice. On both ocaissons, I had just stepped out of the bathroom after taking a hot shower and it must have been the steam from the bathroom that trigered it on.
I'm so glad to find this blog. I really thought we had the only house that did this so it gives me some comfort that we are not alone. Our house has done this randomly for years & I never knew why. The batteries are new but I never thought about temperature, dust or bugs. Thanks so much for the tips!
3:25, 3:30, 3:47...I hope this will end soon. No battery warning beep...so could be dust, bugs, or high humidity chilly night? My poor son has a final at 8:00 am. :(
Great comments.
I did not sleep well Sunday night when the EXACT SAME THING happened to me (except it was 4:30)
no heat, no smell of smoke, and the downstairs detector never went off.
I bought new batteries, but because there has been no repeat incident I haven't taken them out of the package yet.
But, in recent days with the days getting warmer, I have seen a few new bugs in the apartment. My cat gets the best of them, but not on the ceiling.
New battery, maybe a little bug spray too!
Thanks!
SO, this has just happened to me as well, and it's also 4 am; I see a definite pattern here: so I have to ask: WHY FOUR A.M.?
Do the manufacturers have a giggle and say, oh, let's make them all fail at the same time, hahaha won't that be funny?
Or what? I think that's very odd.
Hmmm.
Mine went off this morning at 2, and again at 2:15! I was freaking out, thinking someone broke into the house, and was using the fire alarm as some cruel way of startling me awake. I must have been having some interesting dreams...
Of course, this happened on a night when my fireman boyfriend is on duty. I tried to call him, but no luck, he didn't answer. I know that I am NOT checking for bugs causing the mischief. That will be something he can do when he gets home! Lol Hope they don't go off again!
I wonder why the alarms all seem to go off in the middle of the night? Maybe the manufacturers installed a tiny camera to watch us frantically jump out of bed, then giggle with each other at how hilarious we all are? Ha ha jk! But it IS a weird coincidence, isn't it?
Our hardwired alarms first went off at 11pm last night. We had to turn off the power to the house to shut them off. All the green lights were off. No red lights. At 1am, they went off briefly. At 3am, we had to turn the power off again! We replaced all the batteries. The alarms went off two more times. My kids were a mess! We finally, disconnected a few alarms. An alarm just went off at 10:30am. I disconnected another alarm! We will be replacing all of our alarms today! This was probably the 20th time we have had the alarms go off in the middle of the night, but never as bad as last night.
Someone talked about switching his smoke detector battery with a guitar tuner's... Funny thing is I just did the same thing last night just before I hit the web to find out the cause of those intermittent alarms without detectable cause.
Omg I was soooo scared last night when that happen to me I thought it was a ghost since I hsd been watching a haunting in connecticut at 11pm and the alarm when off at 3am im soo glad I read all these comments if it happens again im not going to be as scared as last night
:)
I believe the 4:00a.m. pattern is connected to the active cycles of the creepy crawlies. For example, bed bugs are genetically programmed to be their most active (finding hosts) when humans are in the deepest REM sleep cycle which occurs around 4:00 a.m. This may be true for other little crawling troublemakers.
Happened last night (4:00a.m.). Changed all the batteries today and it is happening again tonight. Blew all but the one 15' up on the ceiling with air duster, and I hope that works. Didn't see any creepy crawlies, but there are a lot of spiders in the house (August in Arizona). If this doesn't work, I'll have to break down and buy new detectors. Thanks for the tips.
Hasn't anyone else seen paranormal activity? Isn't the devils hour really 4 am? Anywho.. this just happened at my place at 7am.. twice in a row. I will say it has happened at an old place at 4am though.. seems to be a ritual around these parts. I hate my landlord so I will just let the evil spirited things be until she moves back in.. then I'm leavin an ouji (sp?) For her in the attic :)
Up for the 5th time since 11 pm. This is an 8 month old house so no reason for this to be happening. Hubby has come home 5 times from work since I can't teach them or move the ladder. Units are new, batteries are fine, no bugs or steam etc. Taking all 9 plus the carbon monoxide one down and will call the electrician. I don't know what else to do. Guess I can pray nothing happens while they're down :-(
Mine went off at 1:30am, 2:00am, and 2:15am. 7 interconnected w/batt backups. Replaced the batteries in 5 of them and wiped them down. Didn't see any critters.. Hopefully they will give it a rest so I can get some rest :-(
Our alarms all the 6 of them went off like at 3 am for just a split of a second then we went back to sleep thinking what could have made the alarm go off but we went back to sleep with no problem. Thirty minutes later all of them went off without stopping. We checked for fire, gas or anything that could have cause the alarms go off but nothing. We don't even have gas at home, no candles nothing. My husband being in the military and law enforcement is making is rounds with his gun clearing every room thinking that may be someone broke into the house. Finally had to take them down by disconnecting the wires and removing the back up batteries since one of them continue beeping even after it was off of the electric wire. We fricked out so called his mom to ask for possible other logical options but she had no idea. Now we know but It is 4:05 am and we can't sleep!
3:00 a.m. alarm goes off for no reason. Almost have a heart attack getting out of bed. My wife and I are asking each other in the dark, what is going on? We walk up and down the stairs but no sign of smoke. It stops for a few seconds and goes off again. I opened my son's bedroom door (poor guy is asleep) jumps off the bed when I open the door. nothing unusual. We go downstairs check the garage, ac unit, nothing unusual. No smoke smell. After a couple of minutes, no sound. Try to go back to sleep. I lay back in bed thinking...what am I missing? Can't sleep. Get up, open my laptop and search. Find this blog. Glad we are not the only ones. Need to figure this out tomorrow. I am starting by replacing all the batteries. Hope this fix the problem. Weary feeling going back to bed now.
Mine did this late last night. It wasn't smoke, monoxide or low battery. After reading about possible explanations I immediately dismissed the 'insect' theory. It's fairly chilly here up north and I hadn't seen a single bug in my apartment in weeks. GUESS WHAT. I was layin in bed today staring at the ceiling and I caught a sneaky black spider crawling out of the detector in my bedroom!! The insect answer was correct after all.
I was just woken up at 4:30am by my alarms going off; scared me witless. No warning beeps, just full-on 'it's a fire and you're gonna die' Hell-shrieking. They're networked and hardwired. I found this out by reading the same-colour embossed small-print text on said screaming fire alarm and now I have tinnitus. I think I've isolated the one which started the others but I can't be sure. They went off four or five times tonight and I can't tell if my frantic flapping beneath the prime suspect had any effect. Present conditions: it's raining heavily outside. It's also what I term spider-season so I wouldn't to be surprised to find one squatting in one of the alarms. I have a can of compressed air which I'll use later when I can turn off the power and see what I'm doing. All the detectors periodically flash red and I don't know if this means anything; as far as I can tell they don't have a green light to flash. My sister who lived here before me says it happened to her once before. Going to chance it and try and get a few hours more sleep.
Our's went off 10 times, pause 15 seconds, same thing again.
Had all 3 of mine hardwired ..go off starting around at 2AM went on till 5 in the morning...2 had back up batteries which I took out...3rd one I couldnt see...was a different brand...the ones without batteries I kept open and they stopped...took the other one nearly 3 hours of continously having to silence it..before it finally stopped...got the electrician in next day to replace all 3...the noise was deafening..I was surprised my neighbours wernt all banging down my door!
We've having the same problem for a long time. We took the batteries out and they (we have 2) didn't seem to go off as much. My husband put new batteries in them and now they are much, much worse. Can an electrician fix this?
This is crazy...same thing at our house last night as well at 2:00 am! We have a house that isn't quite a year old and it's no fun to be standing completely up before you are fully awake! My whole family was so confused-really thought someone was breaking in and it was the house alarm except we kept hearing "fire, fire, fire!" My husband checked all 3 floors of the house and nothing! They only sounded for maybe 15 seconds and then again at 10:00 am for another 15 seconds. Not a great night as I couldn't really fall back asleep...can't wait for the next chance to jump out of my skin, hopefully by changing all the batteries on all 8 today we won't have that problem again! Glad I found this blog to find out we are not alone!
I just had this happen at 2am with 2 of the 12 smoke alarms going off for about 5 minutes than turn off. all lights are green. new house is only 1yr old. could a power surge do that?
I am seeing a patter with 4:00am. Did you know, most alien bed abductions are reported to happen between 2:00 and 4:00 am. Most reports state that the abducted have no memories until years later. UFO sittings have led to high amounts of gamma particles in the area as well. Sounds interesting that smoke detectors are picking these up. Honestly, time to install a motion activated camera. I believe they are making more contacts now. Google "UFO News" and you will see that the report trends are sky rocketing. Prepare for the worst my friends. They are implanting chips, babies and extracting sperm while we sleep. Thin slender man is coming!
Fresh out of bed because the smoke detector in the hallway went off... at 4:00 AM. What a trend with the 4 AM wet your pants thrill.
Post a Comment