My Ears Are Ringing

It happened agained!

At 3:15 this morning all the smoke detectors in our house went off. We felt the doors, smelled around, checked the basement, the attic, outside, and found no trace of a fire. We tried turning off the smoke detectors individually like last time, but they wouldn't shut off. We called the security alarm people and they told us how to disconnect the alarm, which didn't shut off the smoke detectors either. We called the fire department who were no help. We called the alarm people again and they told us to take a vacuum to our smoke detectors and finally they shut off. The time was now 4:15 and the alarms had been going off for an hour.

At 5:15 the smoke detectors went off again. This time Dave marched straight upstairs to the vacuum and they stopped immediately. Around 5:30 I finally fell back asleep until 5:53 when I woke myself up. Needless to say, it's been a long morning.

Here's the part that pi$$es me off. The alarm company said the smoke detectors are not their responsibility. I understand that because we don't have our house monitored, but if we did have the house monitored as soon as those alarms would go off, they would have dispatched the fire department and everything would have been taken care of. So, if the smoke detectors are not the alarm company's who's are they? Who can I call? If I call the home builder, they'll just say they're not under warranty. From this I've learned one very important lesson...my next house will not have hard-wired smoke detectors.