My smoke alarms all went off at 3:30 this morning

[Leith]

We looked into every corner of the house, no smoke, no fire. Hubby checked the attic to verify that the furnace was okay.

7 1/2 hours later, still no smoke, no fire. We dunno what the hell happened.

[BusyBeingBest]

1. Mine do that from time to time--mine are hardwired in

and that has something to do with it, the same ones on a circuit go off.

[drray23]

2. Could it be that they self tested ?

mine do that once a month. I got the nest monitors.

[Ponietz]

3. A neighbor's wood stove and a low barometer?

[Shermann]

4. The offending alarm should be blinking

Clean it, swap it out, or wait for it to do it again.

Sometimes they get flakey over time.

[Leith]

5. They just did it again!

Aaarggghh!

Hubby hit the reset, it took 2 minutes to for them shut off.

New sound: after the reset and before silence, there was another sound that I can only describe as an old fashioned telephone busy signal: 3 buzzes, one beat of nothing, then the 3 buzzes repeated. It was impossible to localize the new sound.

[Wolf Frankula]

6. Check the batteries

They may be getting low.

Wolf

[Leith]

7. Yeah

I just googled it and the 2 main reasons for false alarms are dust and old batteries. The 3rd most likely reason is old smoke alarms.

We are going to fix the first 2 by dusting the inside when we put in new batteries. I really don't want to get new smoke alarms.

[icwlmuscyia]

8. that's what happened to me about a year ago

IIRC eventually they will just blast until the batteries die. - which is a long time.

[Leith]

9. They are STILL going off!

Hubby has changed the batteries in 4 of them, hit them with canned air to get rid of dust, and reset.

Crap crap crap!

[hedda_foil]

10. Are you in a house or condo? My condo has interlinked alarms so if one unit rings, all do.

If that's not it, are they hardwired to an electrical circuit?

[Mr.Bill]

12. Are they also carbon monoxide detectors?

Do you have any gas burning appliances?

[MissB]

11. If they're relatively newer smoke detectors, they have a shelf life after installation.

And they’ll alllll go off because they were likely installed on the same day.

So you might just have to replace all of them.

[Leith]

13. Yeah, that's what we had to do

And it looks like that's the reason. The peace and quiet is nice.

[MissB]

14. I went crazy one morning

I was working from home (pre-pandemic) and Dh had just left to bike to his office. The smoke detector up in one of my boys’ rooms went off. Hmmm. Ok, no fire. Hit the button on the detector, chalked it up to randomness.

15 minutes later, the one in the basement went off. Sigh. Ok, then I understood what was happening. They’re all hardwired and we put them in on the same day.

So when we replaced them that weekend, we replaced alllll of the hardwired ones in the house (which is most of them) so that when those go, they all go at once.

Except for the one in the hall outside the main floor bathroom. That one malfunctioned after a few months (the sensor on it read the humidity as smoke) so we replaced that one with a more appropriate detector.

I love those things and yet hate them all at once.

[Fla Dem]

15. While mine are hard wired, the also have a battery. They go off when

the battery dies. Always at 2:00 in the morning.