Fire alarm keeps going off

[Darthwazette]

My upstairs smoke detector keeps randomly going off (as in full on alarm not little low battery chirps).

My house is not on fire. I can’t remove its batteries as it doesn’t have replaceable batteries.

What can I do?

Thanks

Is it wired in to the mains? If so, an electrician could help?

No it’s not. I taken it down and brought it to the living room with me so I can shut it up quickly when it starts.

You probably need it replacing, sounds like its sensor is faulty, if it's on the mains.

You may be able to see which circuit it's on in your fuse box and switch it off until someone can replace it. Please make it an absolute priority to repair it / get a battery operated one temporarily if you do this, tho.

You can try dusting it or hoovering it in case it's dust or a spider. 😀

It’s not on the mains. I’m more than happy to replace it but how do I shut this one up? It’s going off every 5 minutes.

I'd hoover it too. The fire alarm in my old shared house went off every couple of minutes from about 2am one night. It was like a being stood next to a car alarm in every single room of the house. It finally stopped at about 10am. Someone came round to look at it that afternoon, it turns out it was a spider walking past the laser. It was a tortuous night.

It must have a power source.

Otherwise smash it with a hammer and go get a new one. 😀

it could be an old "ionization" alarm, these are well known for getting dirt build up in the tiny laser inside them and this can trigger the alarm. normally they go off every 5 minutes, its like a fail safe to let you know something is wrong.

all new smoke detectors now have to be "optical" as the "ionization" alarms hold a tiny micro amount of radioactive material (Completely harmless I might add)

Best thing to do if you cant gain access to a battery etc is to just smash it and replace.