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Came home from picking up my kids at art camp this afternoon and we heard the smoke detector in their upstairs bedroom going off. Not beeping, actually going in alarm mode.
Only one in the house doing this, no warning it might be battery related, no fire, no smoke, no smell, hot day but it's been hotter and of course NO HUSBAND home, no upstairs ladder and no idea what to do/
I can't even get up the stairs myself due to recent injury but kids say can't smell anything, don't see anything.
Husband will be home around 5 from out of town. What should I do besides shoot the damn thing!
It should have a reset button on it. have the kids push it. If they cannot reach it, give them a broom.
Something is wrong. When one goes off, the entire system should alarm. At a minimum you will need to replace that detector (unless your system is not a communicating system, in which case, you may want to consider replacing all of them.
Get a piece of cardboard and fan it. Hopefully it will go off. If so, double check for smoke. If not or if it goes back on, call the fire department. Have them check for smoke and to examine the detector.
It should have a reset button on it. have the kids push it. If they cannot reach it, give them a broom.
Something is wrong. When one goes off, the entire system should alarm. At a minimum you will need to replace that detector (unless your system is not a communicating system, in which case, you may want to consider replacing all of them.
When mine have done this in the past simply removing the cover and cleaning out the dust and cobwebs has fixed the problem. I now just routinely clean them when I dust.
I eventually called the non emergency fire department number. It was driving us crazy- even with ear plugs- for about 1.5 hour and stopped only 10 minutes before fire department showed up. In the mean time I got my husband on the phone who tried to tell me it was not a function of the battery but was "hooked up" to our electrical system. Fireman changed 9 volt battery and said all our detectors had backup batteries, whatever that means. I'm insisting my hubby change the batteries throughout the whole house like the fireman suggested.
I'm so truly thankful this did not happen in the middle of the night as my little daughters would have freaked. I hope this is my only interaction with the fire department. They were so kind and even really good looking but just seeing a firetruck in front of my house made me a nervous as heck.
Ours upstairs did this sometimes back. We changed the battery and everything and it turned out the one in basement has bad battery! So yes change the 9V back up batteries in all.
Wow. I want my firedepartment to come and change the batteries. Do they do flashlights too?
Seriously, you have a nice fire department, or at least one nice fireman. Of course most firemen are nice, but not many are allowed to spend time changing a battery.
THey make ten year batteries for those. They are expensive, but changing them cna be a hassle, so putting it off for ten years is nice.
However it appears your system is not communicating. Normally when one goes off, they are all supposed to go off together. Either something is wrong with that one, or your system is old and does nto have communication. You may want to replace that one or upgrade the whole system. THen, it will be really annoying when a bettery goes dead.
In my experience when a smoke detector battery goes bad, the unit chirps - it doesn't go off for an hour plus. But then, if changing the battery fixed the problem ...
On the other hand, a new smoke detector unit is about ten bucks. Buy the same brand/type and it's a 30-second installation job. Whenever I've had one that is flaking out on me, I've replaced the whole unit - especially when they are in a hard to reach location. The 10-year lithium batteries are great too - seems like the last one I bought was about 5-6 dollars.
I have heard that one should replace smoke detectors every ten years - I've never done that, and I don't know if that's good advice or just something put out by the same Madison Avenue folks who tell me to change my oil every block and a half.
When I change batteries, I write the date on the battery with a felt market pen, and make sure to change them yearly.
Pick a time you can remember, such as when day lite saving time changes or your birthday, etc
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