Homeowner Forum / Construction / September 2005

forgive me if this OT, but you guys have helped me a lot before and I
figured one of you would have run into this...

One of our smoke detectors has developed the unnerving habit of going off
(only in the dead of night OF COURSE!) when there is no smoke, no flame, no
nothing. (Just rapidly pounding hearts from several suddenly awakened people
and one frazzled chocolate lab!)

It did it once about six weeks ago -- alarmed about two minutes, turned
itself off, then went off again five minutes later for another five minutes.

Last night it went off twice, once at 4:45 and one at 6:20, each for under a
minute.

My theory was the unit was dirty, causing problems with the photoelectric
eye. We once had a spider build a web over one, causing similar problems.
Hubby took cover off and checked it after first incident, found nothing.

It could be the unit is just failing, though it is no more than six years
old. (I understand the life span is about 10 years -- just my luck to get
one who decides to die young.) I hate to replace it though and have the new
unit do the same thing. It is hard wired with a back-up battery, and this is
not the low-battery chirp. It's the full-out "get your butt out of bed and
out of the house NOW" alarm.

The unit is tied into an ADT alarm system, but we do not have a monitoring
contract on it, so the fire department didn't get notified. But could there
be a short in that system.

Any suggestions before I take to sleeping fully clothed, as I sometimes did
in my false-alarm prone dorm room in college?

Songbird

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