Had to call the fire brigade out. Smoke alarm kept going off!!

[Elderflower14]

Just as we sat down to eat our lunch the smoke alarm kept going off. We checked everywhere and no smoke or anything. We kept switching it off. It's connected to the electrics. The fire brigade fitted it. It went off six times. We tried to ring the non emergency fire brigade number but it wasn't manned so I bit the bullet and dialled 999. I did stipulate the problem and explained it wasn't a huge emergency but they arrived with the sirens blaring!
Turns out one of the firemen was one of my pupils from school. Wilf and I gave him a big hug. They were very sweet as I was embarrassed and they fitted a new alarm before they left.

For the posters saying to disconnect the fire alarm - I'm a council tenant and it's written in my tenancy agreement that I am not allowed to tamper with the boiler, water, or electrics, it would invalidate my tenancy agreement. So it's not necessarily an option for everyone.

So you have a landlord so you would call them and state the alarm is sounding, of which they have a network of engineers able to attend same day.

@sleepsuitbag They were happy to leave me & 2 DC without heating & hot water for two weeks over Christmas a few years ago because my upstairs neighbour flooded his bathroom which brought the ceiling down on the boiler. I can't imagine they'd be racing out on Christmas Day for a faulty fire alarm.

What’s done is done but in future, it sounds like you had multiple people in the property and not one of you could figure something else out? It’s not an emergency.

Appreciate there are vulnerable household members but was everyone there vulnerable?

Very often mains fire alarms are combination smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. You cannot smell carbon monoxide, there's no way - other than a detector - of knowing if there is a problem.

It's very likely the FB attended to check for CO, which would be an emergency. If it had been alarming due to CO, and OP had disconnected it and gone to bed, as some posters are suggesting, it could very well have been fatal.

Quite. Disgraceful waste of emergency services time.

Really?
Might not have been so lovely had there been a genuine emergency a crew couldn’t get to because of this. It could have cost lives.

By the logic of some people on here, the Fire Brigade shouldn't do fire safety training in schools, use buildings for training (they used to use buildings where I worked so they weren't just using their own all the time), do any kind of public engagement, and leave cats stuck up trees.
The operator thought it serious enough to send a fire engine - and I'd suggest they're more experienced & trained than most of the posters on here.

We have a wired one you can't override, so have all the houses (fitted by the builders as per planning regs for town houses) and several houses have had them go wrong, had to call an emergency electrician, you don't call the fire brigade for future reference

Why do you think you know more than the emergency operator what counts as wasting the fire brigade's time?

If they sent out a crew in an engine, they thought it was worth it.