Please help with my smoke alarm problem

[Hoverfly1]

Sorry not an aibu but I need some help. My hardwired interconnected smoke alarms will not stop going off I think there is dust stuck in one of them but no amount of hoovering or dusting will stop them going off for the last 2 hours. I live in a rented house so didn’t install them, I have looked for a fuse but can’t find one. Tried just turning the electricity off at the mains but that didn’t make any difference as they must have back up batteries and I suspect trying to remove them will make all the connected alarms go crazy.

I am currently sitting under with a brush silencing it every 5 mins when it goes
off but I can’t spend all night like this and they are still waking my kids and probably neighbours up every time…. Does anyone have any kind of solution? 🙏

Ah, yes. Ignore what I said about twisting. It's a screwdriver and a push. There's a video

It might be worth risking it
I was so stressed when mine did it but my neighbour heard the racket, took it off the ceiling and silenced it and then took my phone and got me a link to order a new one

I’m also worried I about electrocuting myself opening them. I have i idea how electrics work. If they have their own fuse inside will they still be off when I turn off the Main fuse?

With our three interconnected alarms, when the internal back-up batteries get low, they tend to go off. - albeit a bit out of tune. There is a small hole on the edge of the alarm's rim and I have to push a small screwdriver or even a stout match into it to push against a plastic tab. At the same time, turn the lower part of the alarm's body and it comes away from the part still attached to the ceiling - the two parts will still be attached by wires. These wires come out of the ceiling into a "plug" for want of a better word that is pushed into a "socket" on the lower half. A quick waggle of the plug and a gentle pull and it detaches from the lower half. Then I can open the small battery compartment and remove the 9v battery. I have to then reverse the process using a new battery.

I have no idea if yours are the same as mine and I'm only telling you how mine work. Best of luck.

Seriously just change the back up batteries, you won’t electrocute yourself!

They are hardwired ones

Could you try blowing it clean with a hairdryer? Maybe it needs to be blown out rather than trying to suck it out with the vacuum

Hardwired ones still have a battery backup otherwise they wouldn't work during power failures.

I plucked up the courage to prise it off the ceiling with the electricity off at the mains, found several dead spiders inside it. The back up battery cannot be changed according to a label within the unit. All the connected alarms seem to have gone dead now this one has been removed so now have no smoke alarms which isn’t great but at least we can gets some sleep and hopefully get it sorted tomorrow.

Well done! I felt sure that desperation would drive you to get in there one way or another before the night was over. So glad you managed to kill the noise and get some sleep.