smoke alarm went off

[cazzz1975]

I have 2 smoke alarms (living room and upstairs hall) they are wired into the mains so they are always on, last night at about 3.30am they went off! my daughter freaked out and we jumped out out of bed not knowing what to expect...

anyway on investigation I went downstairs and there was nothing smoking or alight or anything, why would it just go off like that? its been fine since we moved in (july) so why would it just go off randomly?

btw, I am aware that this isnt the correct catagory, but my body and soul took a drubbing last night from being scared the bejesus out of

[legend758duo]

mightve been a power surge cazz

as its mins operated.

they are common.

thats my best guess.

im answering you as i cant opost everything gets hidden away in my profile grrrrrr

[Ethel]

A possibility is your electricity 'cut off' for a minute or two causing the alarms to go off when the electricity resumed.

[~Wingnut~]

Hiya cazz :o)

Don't panic! We have the exact same thing happen to us at least once a year! Ours too are wired to the mains one at the bottom of the stairs and the other one on the landing. The first time it happened I flew out of bed panicking thinking we were on fire only to find nothing (thank goodness!) and it has happened more or less every year since. When we last had the fire and smoke alarms tested (as they are every year being a council tenant) I mentioned it and he said it's probably just a power surge or the power cut off for a few seconds, he couldn't really give me an answer.
Might be an idea to sort out a fire plan so if anything should ever happen, your family know exactly what to do. I know it shook me into organising one and making sure the kids knew what to do and how to escape.

Hope you've calmed down a bit now, I know exactly how you feel and it is very unnerving :o)

[cazzz1975]

thanks for your replies, we have had a lot of power cuts since we moved in (ran out of electric with a card meter ;) )
we have since put a normal meter in, it never caused the smoke alarm to go off.

that said these things do happen!!!, thanks for the calming posts, I was starting to think I was haunted!!

[~Wingnut~]

I guess if anything Cazzz at least you know they work and that you would be woken up! lol
I'd rather just push the test button to discover that rather than at 3 in the morning tho!!!

[country_boy]

Hi
I recently moved house and a couple of weeks later exactly the same thing happened to me, they were both going off, I'd "hush" one and the other would then go off! Later that morning the same thing happened again.
Mine are mains with battery back-up, I changed both batteries and that seemed to solve it. Both batteries were dead so not sure if that's what triggered it.

[bhg481]

I find country-boy's post interesting. Our alarms are battery only and beep at intervals to warn if the batteries are low. For a mains powered one it's important to know that the back-up battery is good as a fire might well involve power failure, in which case the alarm wouldn't go off if the back-up battery were flat. I suspect your incident was a warning to you to check the back-up battery.