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Whelp, my fire alarms went off.


maddmaxx

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Two days in a row my smoke detectors detected someone exiting the bathroom after a shower.  I pulled that one off the wall and disconnected it from the system.  The next day it went off on my desk when the rain started outside.  I had to pull the battery to shut it up.

Further investigation showed that my multi detector hard wired system had detectors that expired in 2003.  :frantics:

New detectors compatible with my wiring harness will be here monday.

What an idiot.

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Ok, so, what is it about water and steam that set off a smoke detector? Girls in my dorm used to set them off with hairspray when styling their hair in the hallway mirrors. Are they just sensitive to any particle or change in the surrounding air?

And isn’t there a reset button so you don’t have to change the whole device after it goes off?

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49 minutes ago, roadsue said:

Ok, so, what is it about water and steam that set off a smoke detector? Girls in my dorm used to set them off with hairspray when styling their hair in the hallway mirrors. Are they just sensitive to any particle or change in the surrounding air?

And isn’t there a reset button so you don’t have to change the whole device after it goes off?

Chances are that over the years your detector picks up a coating of grease and dust that 1.  reduces the sensitivity of the detector to real fire smoke and 2. in the presence of moisture or humidity causes the detector to go off even in the absence of smoke.  In theory one might be able to clean  the detectors internals but that will require a disassembly and reassembly of the unit.  You can help by vacuuming the unit every now and then to remove loose dust that attracts grease and moisture but eventually even that's a losing proposition.

The quieting button (reset?) is good for silencing the alarm for false alarms like cooking smoke but when the alarm starts going off all the time, in our case someone exiting the bathroom after a shower, it's past due time to do something.  In addition, like all things electronic, there is an expected lifetime for the components.  The industry standard seems to be about 10 years for a smoke detector and 5 to 7 years for a dual detector that watches out for excessive CO as well.

I got a sort of miraculous 25 years out of this set and it was indeed the one closest to the kitchen/bathroom area of the house that failed first.  It was inexpensive to purchase 3 more for under $35 and the installation was relatively easy, requiring only minor modifications to the plug on the old harness without having to wire in a new harness.  

I have a 3 detector system, one near the kitchen in the hallway protecting the bedrooms, one downstairs in the basement where youngest son lives and one in the secret lab where there are lots of electronics that might start a fire just out of spite.  They are wired together so that if any one goes off, all sound the alarm.  There will be no sleeping through these.

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I had some old detectors up when I purchased my condo.  They eventually went off but I couldn't figure out how to take down the old ones (and it didn't appear they had a battery you could just replace).  They were on the ceiling and I was afraid if I pulled too hard, I'd just pull down part of the ceiling.  So I just left them there and put up a new one as well.  :dontknow:

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8 minutes ago, Kirby said:

I had some old detectors up when I purchased my condo.  They eventually went off but I couldn't figure out how to take down the old ones (and it didn't appear they had a battery you could just replace).  They were on the ceiling and I was afraid if I pulled too hard, I'd just pull down part of the ceiling.  So I just left them there and put up a new one as well.  :dontknow:

Try twisting the whole unit.

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