To kill the electrician ....

[SacreLao]

... who told me my smoke alarm wasn't broken, TWICE, last week and that it's going off was normal.

He even had the cheek to tell me that's what smoke alarms are designed to do, yes but not at fucking 3am when there is no smoke!

Well it has now been going off constantly for nearly 3 hours, nothing will shut the thing up and there isn't a single bit of smoke.

I have all doors and windows open trying to stop it and my head is killing me. I am now waiting in for the same fucking electrician who claimed it was absolutely fine.

GRRRRR.

WIBU to murder him if he dosn't solve the problem today.

Gawd, you have my sympathies! My landlord installed hardwired detectors recently, most of the are smoke detectors and fine, but the one in the kitchen is a heat detector. It regularly goes off when we're cooking and it's deafening, but at least we can stop it by opening windows and a door. I can't imagine how awful it would be if it was on all the time, I'd have to leave!

These are hard wired as well so can't even take the batteries out.

Have tried turning the electric off but it dosn't stop them.

We have 2 and they are linked together so if one goes off they both do.

Luckily the children are at school as DS has SN and cannot cope with noise, the dog is going crazy however.

Just rang again to see WTF the electrician is but apparantly it's not a urgent repair so could be hours yet.

I swear i'm slowly going deaf.

Had the neighbour round as well wondering what's going on, it is so loud!

Yes, my smoke alarms are linked to the heat detector, the whole house gets the benefit. Which would be excellent in the event of a fire, of course, but to be stuck in with them going off strikes me as a bloody emergency! on your behalf.

Hi,
Actually even the hardwired ones have a battery in them, it's a backup in case the electricity goes down. The noise will stop if you can get the battery out (usually remove the outer case and it should be inside similar to the old style ones).
Good luck!

Has it stopped, yet, SacreLao, or have you been driven mad by the noise?

Switch the electrics off at the fuse box?

It is (almost certainly) run off the lighting circuit. You can turn that off for a bit if you like. You can update the label on the consumer unit, once you know for sure which MCB supplies the detectors. The reason for putting them on the lighting circuit is that you will notice if the circuit ever fails, and to try to stop you disabling them. The internal battery is supposed to last between the time the fire burns through the supply cable, and the time you evacuate the house.

BTW they do sometimes go wrong. I would say mine last less than 10 years each.

They can sometimes be set off by aerosol sprays, such as deodorant or hairspray. You will probably find that one of them is flashing a red light, that will be the one that's gone off.

I wonder if you could muffle the noise by wedging a soft cushion up there witha broomstick? Hard-wired ones are usually arranged so that they all honk if one of them is set off. But it will be very embarrassing if you discover it has been hooting because you have a smouldering fire in the tumble drier or something.

take out the battery (backup) and pull the fuse, they should have a designated one

I most certainly did not do this in our last house, oh no