smoke alarm trouble

Caroline73_2

I have two of the smoke alarms with the internal batteries that were fitted free by the fire service.

The fitting was about 4 years ago and they alarms are meant to last 10 years. One of my alarms is bleeping constantly - not the alarm noise but an intermittent beep like when batteries are fading in traditional alarms.

I have called the local fire safety department who deal with this but I am waiting for a call back on a date for them to come and look at it. I have tried vacuuming the alarm, resetting it etc but it still beeps.

Does anyone have any suggestions how to stop the noise as it's really starting to irritate.

Mojisola

My friend ended up hammering it flat in the garden after being driven distracted by the alarm. That stopped it.

Caroline73_2

I am so close to doing that, believe me.

BonandDom

Do you mind me asking-
1. Are you over 55/60 years old?
2. In receipt of any income based benefits?
3. Suffering from any disability?

If you can answer yes to 1 and yes to either or both 2 and 3, contact your local council and ask them if they provide a handyperson service. My local area provides such a service and they will do all sorts of jobs for free if you in receipt of income based benefits or a £10 charge if you're not.

They should treat this as an urgent case.

Caroline73_2

No to all of the above I'm afraid.

kazwookie

Can you get the alarm safely down?

If so can you open it up remove the battery and replace it, then put it back? or do you have a tall neighbour who could?

fluffpot

you need to change the battery for a new one. The intermittent chirping indicates this. maybe the original batteries were a bit dud or had been sitting around for a ling time! All in all, not something you need to call the fire brigade out for!

Caroline73_2

You cannot change the batteries in these alarms. I thought I had explained this in my first post.

I called the home fire safety team NOT the fire brigade who are going to replace the alarm as it is the alarm that needs changing not the battery.

Mojisola

Caroline73 wrote: »

You cannot change the batteries in these alarms. I thought I had explained this in my first post.

I called the home fire safety team NOT the fire brigade who are going to replace the alarm as it is the alarm that needs changing not the battery.

As Caroline says, you cannot take the battery out of the alarms that the Fire Safety Team fit. This is intentional as the fire alarm is seen by some people as a handy container for a spare battery! When a battery is needed elsewhere, the one from the alarm is used and it's easy to forget to fit a new one, sometimes with terrible consequences.

The ones fitted are meant to last for ten years but there does seem to have been some bad batches which haven't lasted that long and have been impossible to stop once they start cheeping.

fluffpot

Sorry, I didn't read into the original post that the batteries were not changeable. All you can do to stop the noise then is destroy it I would think! Might be worth getting an 'change over' battery one in the mean time to give yourself some cover.

Caroline73_2

The fireman came in their fire engine and changed the alarm. Their advice was to smash the alarm if that happens again.