We were woken up last night at 2:30 a.m. to a loud screeching noise. After a few seconds I realized that it was the smoke alarms! There was no smoke, the air was perfectly clean, so we thought they were going off because of a low battery. Of course I am bad at keeping batteries in the house, so i had no new batteries to put into the thing. Pluse, the smoke alarms are hard wired so there was NO WAY for us to make it stop! It went off. Then on, then off, then on...until 5:00 a.m.! Very annoying and there was nothing for us to do about it. Plus, it was not making the usual "beep" that it does when it needs new batteries. Dh walked all over the house and checked the attic for smoke or anything, but there was nothing. Anyway, at 5 a.m. the alarm did not turn off. It stayed on. It was going on for about 10 minutes while we tried to figure out how to stop it. BTW, dd slept through this whole deal! ds woke up and was covering his ears. Finally we figured "hey, there may actually be a fire somewhere. We better call 911" . So a few minutes later we had a fire engine and ambulance outside our house. Me, dh, and the kids were sitting on the front porch to get away from the noise, which btw, STOPPED when the fire engine turned the corner on to our street and it did not go back on....well not till about 9:30 am. So the firemen came up the drive. Stood there and talked to dh inside the house. Obviously there was no fire. They thought it could have been triggered by the thunder storm. They didn't really have anything new to tell us. So they left and the smoke alarm stayed off the rest of the morning.
My brother is a firefighter, so i called him this morning to tell him what happened. He said there maybe a spider web or something in one of the smoke detectors. Or maybe some condensation because of the a/c or something. So today i replaced all the batteries and vacuumed out all the smoke detectors. But none of that has helped. The noise is off most of the time, but it does go on once in a while. It is so ear piercing!

My kids were very excited that there were firemen in our house though. They thought it was so COOL!

By Dandjmom on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 03:57 pm:

Also what I was thinking a spider web or some sort of condensation. But since you vacuumed and changed the batteries. I don't know what this could be , But I know that it is annoying for you and your family, I hope that you all get some rest tonight. You mentioned that they where hard wired have you thought about having the wires checked?

By Bellajoe on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 04:35 pm:

My dh is going to check them tonight.

By Mrsheidi on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 08:25 pm:

OMG...I would DIE if I were up and down like that. I have zero patience for that stuff, but I'm so glad it wasn't a fire!
Let us know what it is...wonder if anything else is obstructing the radioactive particles? I would think it would be the wiring since ALL of them went off?
We have a sprinkler system in our house and I heard that they do not go off when the roof is on fire. So, July 4th makes us extra nervous!
Hope you find out what it is!!!

By Marcia on Thursday, July 21, 2005 - 11:44 pm:

Because we are a foster family, we have to have our home inspected yearly. The fire inspector told me that smoke detectors are only good for a few years, and then they start malfunctioning. Maybe that's the problem?? We have one that runs on batteries, and one that's wired in. That's the one we had to change.

By Missmudd on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 12:34 am:

Is it a carbon monoxide detector too? If it is detecting carbon monoxide you wouldnt know you had a problem, just the alarm. Figured I would ask just in case.

By Karen~moderator on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 07:47 am:

I was going to suggest replacing them. The one in our hallway that was the original one that was in the house 20 years ago started doing that for no reason, off and on. And the steam from the shower in the kids' bathroom would set it off. It would go off in the middle of the night and scare the HECK out of us - this was when I was divorced and alone with the kids. One night I had to bash it with a broom handle and break it to get it to stop - the kids were terrified, Jen was crying, it was an AWFUL noise. We replaced it, and have replaced them since. I'd replace it if I were you. BTW, the one we had that went nuts, was hard-wired into the wall - now we just have the battery operated ones.