Dammit! It happened again. I have written several posts about the dog gone smoke alarms going off in the middle of the night. It’s terrifying. There has never been a fire. Sometimes we get the rhythmic beeping (or throbbing) that a new battery is needed. Some have been a full out alarm that should signify a fire or at least smoke.
It usually goes off between 3 and 4 a.m. Last week we were lucky (sort of). It waited until 5:30. It was still dark. It was a full alarm. I almost had a heart attack. There was a herd of cats galloping to get under the bed. Had there been a fire, I’m not sure how quick I would have been and with all that racket there would be no chance of rescuing the cats.
By code we are required to have 5 second floor alarms (bedrooms and hallway). In our house it works out that all of them are installed within a 10 foot radius. There are no long hallways. Just a landing and each bedroom is off the landing which puts this incredible number of whining sirens so close that it could kill a person from fright.
When one goes off, they all do. A battery went bad on this last round so they all went off on full alarm. It was louder than a rock band on acid. I am convinced I suffered hearing loss.
The cats were terrified. It took hours before the cats would come out from under the bed. The offending alarm was located in the cat bedroom so they were not keen on entering that room either.
I am a fan of safety. I am also a fan of logic and reason. We cannot alter the alarms or remove any as it would void our homeowners’ insurance. I really don’t need 5 alarms situated 15’ from my bed. I am not that hearing impaired. Even with a bedroom door closed you can hear it very well.
The beloved husband was already up when it happened so he was quick to act. (Had he been sleeping, the entire system would be on the front lawn and he’s the one with patience!) We have no idea why it didn’t just chirp for a new battery. By the way, the battery was 13 months old. It has an electrical connection so I’m not sure what eats up the battery.
My suggestion is to install Siri (or Alexa) in it and have her chirp “new battery please!” That would work for us. We don’t need the skull splitting noise.
The good news (?) is that it happened when we were home so the cats didn’t have to endure the ear splitting noise for long. (We still don’t have an exit plan for getting the cats out.) The other good news is that it was all in vain. No smoke, no fire. Just sheer terror.
Here is my post from the last time this happened!
Wow! Never heard of such problems. We have two alarms at opposite sides of the house – and one can go off at a time. Neither has ever gone off in 30 years. When the batteries are low we get an annoying little chirp that waits a few minutes before chirping again. It happens so infrequently we forget what the chirp is for and wind up pacing the house to find where the little noise is coming from. Waking up to a real wail would have me running out of the house with the dog and maybe Bill too (just kidding), convinced we would be on fire.
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I’ve never had issues (except for the chirping battery reminder) in other houses. This house was subject to new codes that for our house are ridiculous! We’ve had it wail without smoke/fire before. We’ve had incessant chirping where we had trouble figuring out which one it was. (Current system has a light.) For our standard 4 bedroom house we have 7 detectors. Way too many.
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7 detectors surely sounds like overkill….especially when they go off for no reason and in the middle of the night. Maybe a threat to report the company to the Better Business Bureau unless it is fixed might get some attention?
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It’s code locally. There must be one on an upstairs landing and in each bedroom even if that positions them within 10′ of each other. As going off, we researched replacements and it seems to happen with a lot of them or maybe only the disgruntled customers write reviews!
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I would not be surprised if a sudden alarm sounding in the middle of the night has caused heart attacks – we just never hear the “real story’ in the police reports. Your experience has happened to me, and that sound is beyond deafening. One time it happened when my guy and I were in our small condo overlooking the SF Bay. At 3 in the morning. My guy and I jumped up in our bed so high and hard it’s amazing we didn’t hit the ceiling. I thought it was a siren for a nuclear attack. I like your Alexa/Siri idea – makes a darn lot of sense.
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A nuclear attack? Now that will be forever etched in my mind!
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;-0 Sorry ’bout that. 🙂
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Yikes, that sounds horrendous! It brought to mind my concerns when we viewed into our new place after being told that our alarm is electrically powered. I house-sat for a friend once and her similar alarm chirruped over a weekend as I couldn’t figure out how to stop it. Mind you, she couldn’t either & had to call an electrician. The same stay, her water desalination alarm (I know, go figure) went off all, but I’d learned about that one during my previous stay! I’ve no idea who does her house sitting now, but I wonder if they’ve experiencing the same issues 🙂 I hope the cats have recovered.
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That cats have recovered but I’m not sure I have. I worry that the dang thing will go off when we are not home and the poor cats can’t do anything but hide. Your friend should move!
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I feel for you. My friend has cats too, but they roam free & only come in for food & cuddles. She’s unlikely to be persuaded to move as it’s the dream home she built on the plot of her parents old home. That & it probably only happens when she’s away on holiday 😀
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🙂 Maybe just new alarms then.
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We have that happen periodically. It is nerve wracking for sure! So weird that they are eating batteries if they are wired into the house power system!
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I need someone to ‘splain that to me!
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I feel like we have teched our way past usefulness with home fire alarms. Little individual fire alarms with their own batteries were certainly annoying when they chirped for new batteries, but this is crazy!
We had a similar stupidity at work a year or two ago. It was a chirp but no one could turn it off. It was the craziest damn thing. Owner came in on a Sunday, pulled out manuals, couldn’t fix it. Calls were made to the company that made it, electricians were brought in on a Sunday. One of the managers fell of a ladder trying to figure out where the damn beep was coming from.
Finally the owner asked his son in law, a fireman, to come in. SIL walked into the room. Stood a moment, said it wasn’t the main fire alarm system, leaned over and pulled out a co2 detector plugged in under a desk.
I assume the beeping stopped when the owner threw the damn thing in a dumpster. But I prefer to think it’s still beeping in the garbage dump.
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That is funny. Sometimes it’s hard to identify to offending device. It has a small light that flashes red but when you are bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, it’s deceiving. I expect that thing is still beeping.
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I’ve never known of an alarm system where one triggers all, Kate, and that really is an overabundance of caution! I would be freaked out, too! You are so right about it being a good thing that you were home at the time. The extremes of the blast of sound could have harmed the cats, I’d think. This is quite a dilemma! 😦
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It wasn’t good. I may be totally insane now.
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And now I am all caught up. Someday you will have to explain to me how you are so fast in the reading and responding. I know that you are not spending the entire day at your laptop . . . What is your secret?
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Depends on the day. Some days I check periodically and some days I don’t check all day. Today I wasn’t feeling great so I checked more frequently.
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A recurring theme seems to be developing here – things that wake you up in the middle of the night. I can think of three offhand: robocalls, fire alarms, and changes in the Starbucks menu.
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🙂 So true!
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The last time you posted about this, I went ahead and changed our batteries. I guess I’m going to do so again just to be on the safe side. I hope you can figure out what’s wrong with your system, ugh. – Marty
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It’s the poltergeist that lives here that does it!
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Good God, Kate!! That is just a horrible thing to wake up to!
It makes zero sense to me that an alarm is required by every bedroom – we’re not talking a hotel here. This is a private residence. Our code is one on each floor although we have 2 in the basement – one in the furnace room and another by the stairs. That’s plenty when these batteries start to go wild!
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Our home was built 16 years ago. I should recheck the code to see if they have revised it. Not all regulations make sense. The idea is if the door is closed and there is one in the room, it will detect smoke faster. However, there should be just one alarm sounding rather than having each emit a soul shattering noise.
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Yeah, it still doesn’t make sense to me. Exactly how deaf does one have to be to miss the ear-shattering noise of a smoke alarm outside a closed door?
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Now I’m curious. I wonder if there is special equipment for hearing-impaired people.
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I think they are alarms that come with flashing lights.
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I’d like one with an inside voice.
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😆
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That’s funny – “a herd of cats galloping to get under the bed” – I can just picture your poor cats.
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This is the first time that I can remember getting the full on siren. Normally we get the annoying chirping (translation: Mama needs a new battery!) but annoys the cats a lot. I wanted to follow them under the bed but I don’t fit.
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If this ear-splitting noise happened only with animals, it would be labeled inhumane and stopped immediately.
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Many years ago the alarm went off at a local rescue. The poor things (dogs especially) had to endure it for some time until they got it turned off. You would think there would be a better way.
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What is it – all the darn things know when it’s about Oct and they all scheme to go off at the same time – just to emphasize “Fire Safety Month” to those of us who no longer have any connections to those safety campaigns in schools?
I fretted a good part of last week at Person’s house worry that one of those was blinking a red signal and readying to shrilly shriek when we were least ready. It didn’t happen, …this time. …
Head staff here replace our home ones with ones that send signals to cell phone if it goes off….yes, it works…we had to drive home like crazy a few weeks ago because one said “Smoke detected”. …for a few minutes then it stopped..but we had to drive home like crazy. there was nothing wrong, but the company decided it was defective and sent a newer updated version (that makes me feel really good about the other ones…)
We know Molly would go through windows if necessary to get away from the sound…you know, the house we can spare, but not the pups. RC just folds her ears in and dives under cover in a hole somewhere. So not a fun time.
Hope yours have been soothed into submission and are sleeping silently and cooperatively
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Remember when we were in grade school and we had fire drills? The nuns would be “Stay calm. Keep quiet. March in a straight line.” Can you imagine sirens going off with 150 kids freaked out? I need a detector with a calm voice saying “Dude! Get out or you’re toast” in a loud enough (but not overly loud) voice. I’m sure we could come up with some better alternatives.
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I’m sure someone could make a mint if they could configure these smoke and C02 alarms to go off during the daylight hours!
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I don’t know what it is about nighttime but it sure prefers it.
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As much as I would hate to have this happen to me (especially in the middle of the night), I could not stop laughing. You must admit, it makes for a great story (after you had some sleep and knew that all was well)! 😀
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It took a couple of days until I saw any humor in it. I’m a realist. If I went through the agony I deserve a blog post out of it! 🙂
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That is so maddening! I really feel for you getting woken up like that. Guess what we did today? We had our smoke detectors replaced with brand new ones by the electrician. We are trying to stay ahead of the game so they don’t cause trouble down the road.
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We did that 2 years ago and we still have the midnight sirens! I know their value but for us it’s been more trouble than it’s worth.
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Oh wow. That’s awful. I wonder if there is some kind of short in the whole thing that nobody has found. So weird.
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At my crib, it always happens between 1:30 to 2 A.M. and leaves me far too amped up to try calming down two freaked out doggos, whilst holding my ears until I find a bat to shut the damn thing off. There’s never any getting back to sleep once I’ve managed to quiet the stupid offending alarm. The procedure is a lot like a Marx Brothers film. Chaos and crazy running around finding (a) a fresh battery) and (b) a stool tall enough to reach without falling off. Oi!
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Sounds like our house but now we know where the tall stool is (never handy) and a broomstick can hit the button (maybe). It’s still Keystone Kops.
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We are able to have one on each floor – regular battery changing on January 1st each year and never heard a peep (or a beep!). I think we must be lucky in that arena though from all the comments!!
Pam
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You are lucky. Our code requirements are different for bedrooms. We change the batteries too although this one was overdue (but only by a month). You are lucky. I never had issues with smoke detectors until I moved to this house.
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Holy Cow! You’re right, you’d think they’d have a different, less invasive noise as a warning about the battery. Sheesh! We had one go off recently, a few times, but it was during the day. Max (the dog) is not afraid of anything (not thunder or fireworks either), but that alarm scared the fur off of him. We had one that plugged into the wall, so I don’t know why it went off. There was no fire or smoke. After the third time, we bought battery alarms for the ceiling. Unfortunately, if those go off, they’re more difficult to get at then the plugin.
Hope the kitties are all back to their usual-selves again.
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They are fine but I’m a little worried about leaving them alone with the smoke alarms! They don’t have opposible thumbs!
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LOL we just had a chirper too. Fortunately it was early enough in the evening so that we could identify it (our bedroom) and change the battery before it got mad and did the full screech. Totally feel for you (and the cats). Not sure how our dog would react since it hasn’t happened with him here.
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He wouldn’t be happy. Our cats were crazy and they are very laid back.
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That would be a scare! I only have one alarm in my condo and it has never….I am not going to say it so I don’t jinx myself.
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Don’t jinx yourself! Only one? I swear we have to have them every 3′!
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We had this happen recently, too. No warning, it just went off as if there was a fire. We have 10 or 12 detectors and after that night/early morning, we replaced all of the existing batteries with ones that have a 5 year life. Hopefully by that time we’ll regain our hearing.
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We replaced them all too. I have to check and see if we can get 5 year life batteries!
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Ours went off in the early am just this weekend. The worst part is that we had houseguests and, of course, it woke them up too. No fire, new-ish batteries. The alarms are still pulled from the ceilings… I’m sure we should put them back, but the thought of waking up to that gawd-awful sound again is making us hesitate.
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It is awful. I understand it has to be loud enough to wake up deep sleepers but ours can wake up the dead.
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Wow, that’s excessive alarming in more ways than one IMO. 5 in close proximity? Crikey.
I think it’s recommended you have one in every room but not compulsory as long as you have at least one on each floor.
We have an electrically connected alarm in the hall (the first time it went off scared us all to death so I am more careful when using the toaster now as Maggie bolts), a battery one in the smallest bedroom and a carbon monoxide one in the boiler cupboard where, oh yeah, the boiler is and thus any gas emissions may be. We had our boiler serviced today, and as always, he checked our alarms as well as our gas supply.
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We are required to have one in each bedroom and in the upstairs hallway. With our house design, they are all too close. We have one on the first floor and one in the basement. The concern is for sleeping people. No way you can sleep with those alarms. When I didn’t have a new house (so wasn’t subject to code) I had one on each floor and that worked. Smaller house too.
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I love the image at the top! Can totally relate. At least if we know there is a fire and the alarm sounds the cats will all be under the bed. Not sure I could flip the king bed out of the way to get to them if my cat(s) needed out of the house. I hate the all hooked together thing. Ours are smoke/fire/co2 and we now after several rude alarms have a reoccurring note on the calendar to change all batteries once per year regardless of chirp. We have a bedroom that I use for an office near the kitchen. I’m not a cook/ Need I saw more? BTW I did install a natural gas detector since I can’t smell and would never be alerted to the rotten egg smell. It’s by our gas stove. It has never gone off even when it takes a while for the stove to light sometimes. Hubby has smelled the gas smell but the alarm has never went off. Either it has to be a higher concentration of I’ve put my reassurance in something that doesn’t work.?
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We replaced ours just about 2 years ago so I assume it’s an upgrade from what was in originally. One of the bedrooms isn’t a bedroom but a cat room. I wonder if we could remove that one.
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The noise from those alarms is horrible. I cannot imagine how hearing it for hours would warp a cat’s brain. I have no suggestions about how to solve this ongoing problem but it does make me wonder if there are newer alarms that have a better attitude– so to speak. Going to look into that.
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We ripped out the original system and replaced it about 2 years ago. This was supposed to be so much better and maybe it is. This should have chirped instead of wail. Not happy. They need to come up with something better without the false alarms. Also, if it’s electrically wired, why did it wail for a battery?
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Ah ha! So you can upgrade these systems. Ours is 20 years old, so it might be time. Great question about the battery? It does make me wonder, too.
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ACK! Terrible way to wake up, especially with terrified cats in the house.
Note to self: Check detector alarms.
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It’s frightening. Usually it’s the chirping. This wailing got to me. For a split second I thought there may be a fire.
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Hahal Too funny. I feel your pain Kate.When one goes off my brain chemistry is altered and my behavior becomes erratic and useless. I smack at it, hitting the buttons in panic. After the last time I took a marker & drew a little arrow toward the button I’m SUPPOSED to push to MAKE IT STOP. Haven’t had the opportunity to see if that helps but the day is coming…
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Late at night (or early in the morning take your pick) it’s hard to focus on exactly what you need to do. My husband did a few things before he got it to stop. Can’t imagine his brain since he was right next to it.
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One malfunctioning alarm is bad. Five that have the potential to sound? Unbelievably bad.
Here’s what I would do. Install them, as per code. Then cover the sensing portal with a wad of chewing gum on four of the five. I know this alters them and is against code, but you can always remove before the inspector arrives – if and when that might happen.
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Interesting!
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Ours have never gone off at night. It is ALWAYS when Andy is cooking.
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I’ve only had that happen once and something was burning. The kitchen was filled with smoke! Better than 3 a.m.
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I hate this creatures from hell… we bought ne ones (battery included) not even one week and they all screamed like banshees… hate them…. really hate them … absolutely really hate them… maybe it counts when I glue a firefighter poster on my ceilings? the look would be better …
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I wish the poster would work! I hate them too. They could kill a person without a fire.
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