Our smoke alarms go off regularly?

About once ever few days, every one of our smoke alarms goes off. Its not just chirping like when the batteries are no good, its full on beeping. There is absolutely no smoke, and we changed all the batteries. What causes this?

Public Comments

1. One, are they on the ceiling because they should not be, they should be just a bit below the ceiling on a wall. Next are they going off after a shower or somebody boiling a pot of water because that will set them off too. The smoke alarms in this place are right on the ceiling and if somebody bakes something in the oven they go off from the steam that is released when the oven door opens or if somebody has a shower without turning on the vent fan and opens the bathroom door. Just steam. some systems have the alarms wired together so if one goes off they all go off.
2. The sensors are bad. Get new ones.
3. too close to a steamy bathroom, or to a kitchen where food is prepared too quickly
4. May need cleaning, you must get special cleaner, but may be cheaper to get a new one
5. some times even though you used a 9 vac bat its the wrong type for that application. esp. on older smoke detectors. today's bats are too powerful for those old circuits to handle you may have damaged them already.
6. I have run across this fairly often. Your smoke detector may be dirty, take your vacuum hose and put it up to your smoke detector. This should be done once month. This should take care of your problem.
7. Get a can of compressed air for cleaning electronics and blow it in all of them. If it still happens when there is no baking, steam, etc.. one of the smoke detectors is bad. It would be easiest to just change them all out. A 9volt battery is a 9 volt battery no matter when it was made so dont worry about that. It is most definately not a battery or electricity issue!
8. Depends on how long you've had them. 9 years or less, check to see if they need cleaning. 10 years or more, time to buy new ones.