No, my kids aren't driving me nuts! lol It's the stupid smoke alarms!!! Last night they started going off. They're hardwired into the house with battery backup, so when one goes off ALL *7* go off! I went through the whole house (I was sitting here in the kitchen when they started and knew there wasn't a fire), even ran to Wal-Mart and bought all new batteries, and they STILL went off for over an hour. Dh is out of town, so I called a friend who lives a couple streets down and he stopped by on his way home from work. He called a contractor friend of his and he said they must be sensing something. I finally unplugged a rechargeable that I'd moved from the laundry room to the garage and that seemed to do the trick (who knows why, but it did). Well, about 10 minutes ago I opened up a window in the living room, right next to the front door. Within a minute they beeped about 4 times. I shut the window and they haven't done it since. Can I not open windows??? It's supposed to be in the 80's today! I know in Michigan sometimes the humidity gets high enough to set smoke alarms off, but come on--this is Colorado! I can't have smoke alarms going off all day. The daycare kids will freak out! The contractor did suggest going through the house and unplugging all of the detectors and plugging them back in one at a time to find if there's a bad one, but it's not constant. They'll go off for 5-15 seconds and then stop for anywhere from 1-15 minutes. Ugh. I guess I'll wait and see if they do it again since I shut the window. I'd really love some fresh air in the house. I've had a window in my bedroom open all night. I guess that one's okay to open.

Good grief.....

By Kaye on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 08:45 am:

This happened to me way too many times. I finally gave it, turned off all power to them and installed individual high quality alarms.

one thing i learned in this process, smoke detectors can wear out, about 10 years actually. Also dust can really mess with them, you can take them apart and vacuum really well and sometimes there is a net thing you can rinse.

By Trina~moderator on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 08:55 am:

This happened to us recently. One of the smoke detectors was defective and needed to be replaced.

Rude Awakening!

By Cat on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 09:04 am:

They went off again, and Robin said the one in his room was flashing green instead of solid green like the rest, so I unplugged his and while blowing it out it went off in my hand. I almost dropped it! So his is unplugged with the battery out and they haven't gone off again yet. They're only 2 years old, but there was a lot of dust, drywall powder, insulation particles (it's right next to the attic access), and dirt in it. I'll probably plug it back in tonight after giving it a good cleaning, and if we need to we'll replace it. What a pain!

Thanx for sharing your experiences. Trina, I remember you posting about yours. Ours was a nice alarm clock for the kids this morning! They really don't need to be up at 5:45, though! lol