Have you ever been woken up at 3:00am by the sound of your smoke detectors going off? It seems like they never go off during the day. As you groggily try to find out if your house is actually on fire or if your smoke detectors are just going off for some other reason you can hardly think amidst all of the beeping. So if your house is not on fire why are your smoke detectors going off?
Why Do My Smoke Detectors Keep Chirping?
Your smoke detectors can go off for a variety of different reasons. If your home has large temperature fluctuations in your home can make your smoke detector beep or chirp erratically. Sometimes this will happen if you keep your thermostat at a very high or low temperature. Other times hot air coming from your kitchen or bathroom can cause your smoke detector to go off. If you take extremely hot showers and find that your smoke detector frequently goes off during your shower you may want to consider opening your bathroom door when you shower. Another reason that your smoke detector keeps beeping is that it needs to be replaced. Most homeowners do not know that smoke detectors need to be replaced every 8-10 years. Your smoke detector should have a date of manufacturing on the back of it. If that date is more than 8 years old you should replace the smoke detector.
How to Stop Smoke Alarm from Beeping
The first thing that you should check is the back up battery in your hard wired smoke detectors. Newer smoke detectors are designed to chirp when the back up battery needs to be replaced. Sometimes they skip the chirping step and go right to beeping loudly and repeatedly. Many people do not follow the proper steps when they change the battery in their smoke detectors. You should turn the power to your smoke detector off at your circuit breaker. Next remove the detector from its mounting bracket and unplug the power supply. Then you will remove the battery from the smoke detector. After the battery is removed press and hold the test button on the detector for 15-20 seconds. Put your new battery in the smoke detector and plug it back into the power supply. Turn the power to the circuit breaker back on and reattach the breaker to the mounting bracket. Your smoke detector should chirp one more time after this and then it should stop. If your smoke detector keeps chirping after you have followed the steps outlined above we have a few more things that you should try. Your battery pull-tab may still be in the detector. Your battery drawer could still be open. You will want to make sure that the door is securely shut. There may be dust or a bug in your smoke detector causing it to keep going off. You should try blowing in the crevices of your smoke detector so that you can dislodge whatever is making your some detector continue going off.
Electrical Services in Greenwich, New Canaan, Darien, Norwalk, Westport, Southbury, Stamford, CT & Fairfield County, Connecticut
We also recommend that you schedule an electrical inspection with Sentry Electric. One of the things that we check during the inspection is your smoke detectors. We can take a look at your smoke detectors and see if they are functioning properly. Contact us today.
