My fire alarm won't stop beeping! Help!

[Ridiculousradish]

Fire alarm started chirping at 4:30am. Have removed the battery and replaced with a new one. It's hard wired to the electrics, and was still beeping when the electricity had been turned off. What is this madness?

Property is rented, but landlord is useless at sending people round. Am hoping I can sort this myself.
Thank you!

Clean the contacts and try a different new battery? Or press the test button, I think that might reset it.

Done both of those...

Give it a vacuum, might be dust or insects

Just don't be like my downstairs neighbour who called the fire brigade on 999 because her alarm kept chirping.

How is it both battery and mains operated? Surely just one or the other?

@Sapphire387 what a total knob!

I had this recently. Smoke alarm was over 10 years old so need to replace them all. Do you know how old yours are?

Hard wired have a back up incase electric trips

@sorrynotathome I think the battery is there as a back up? It's a legal requirement now for fire alarms to be hard wired in rental properties. That's what I was told anyway.

It's about 6 years old. Label on it says to replace by 2026, so maybe it is reaching the end of it's life.

Not ideal but i had to unplug mine from ceiling until new ones came

I'm going to contact landlord. I just know I'll be living with the beeping for at least a week or 2 😭

And it's always four in morning! Mine was the same🙄

Are we all picturing this?

What type of building are you in? If there are shared areas like a block of flats then it might be connected to other spaces and be beeping so that you’re on “alert” that you might need to evacuate.

I have one of these, no idea how it works!

@Mmmmdanone I know! I think I might have slept through it if it wasn't for DP trying to sort it and giving himself an electric shock in the process 😬

Is it just a fire alarm, or carbon monoxide as well? Could it be alarming due to that?

@KittensandPerverts I'd forgotten about that 😂

@Rainbowshine am in a terraced house.

I work for a property company. Our properties have the fire alarms wired in with a battery back up.

We had a tenant phone up recently that her smoke alarm wouldn’t stop beeping and that it was faulty. Sent someone out right away to take a look and turned out it wasn’t faulty at all, it was the carbon monoxide button flashing and if they’d been able to disable it easily they could well be dead from CO poisoning.

But yes sometimes the alarms can be faulty. We usually get the electrician to replace them at that point.

@FixTheBone just a fire alarm. Carbon Monoxide detector is in the kitchen.

Have contacted landlord. Last contacted him a month ago about a problem with the ceiling in 2 rooms. He responded, but no one has come round.

This exact thing happened to me in a privately rented flat. I smashed it off the ceiling with a hammer! Not through fury, it just wouldn't stop it's racket.

Ours did this, I think it had an extra backup battery which needed replacing - we googled the make and found the instructions, it would have been impossible to figure out otherwise