The smoke detector alarms gave us one night's peace, but then decided to rampage last night; I rampaged back, and having hands allowed me to overwhelm the buggers.

At almost precicely 12:30AM the first double-beep occurred. I think before I described the alarm as a "bah-woop" soond, but it's really more of a beeBEEP sound; a piercing, but softer beep, interrupted by a louder and more piercing beep. Again, each alarm triggers independently, echoing in a round around the house.

I stirred and stumbled to the top of the stairs where I paused for a listen and sniff for smoke. No noise, no errant lights, no smell. I figured the gremlins were at it again, so I returned to bed, hoping it was the one-time alarm.

It was not.

About five short minutes later the alarm went off again. Again, just once. I wandered through the house checking the fire sources and spaces near the smoke detectors. Nothing was out of place. I took a few moments and hit the detectors in the basement and main floor with the compressed air; it worked before, right?

It apparently did not work before, or at least, it certainly did not work again.

About thirty minutes later the alarm went off again. As if to taunt me, it was a double-beep, but still not a real alarm. I bolted from bed with a mission:

I must stop the alarms!

I stopped first on the main floor where I had thought I had seen the alarm light blink. There's a green light that tells us that the system is AC powered, and a red light that is supposed to blink while it makes noise to tell which is triggered, or alert us when the system is on battery back up by simply blinking. The red light flickered. I noted the other alarm nearby did not flicker at the same time, but before too long it, too flickered.

This led me to believe the system was either false alarming, or loosing power. I returned upstairs and watched the alarms in the hall and the master bedroom, and they, too, blinked the warning light. It seemed unlikely that all of them were faulty in their assessment of smoke and fire, so there must be some wavering in the system that was causing them to revert to battery back-up. It seemed possible that one of them, during one of these transitions, could incorrectly trigger.

I scurried to the basement where I thought two things would be in my favor. The first is that the ceiling is a mere seven feet high, so I can easily reach the alarm and see everything nearby without any assistance. The second was that I was farthest from the sleeping women, so if I made noise or cussed, no one would notice.

I pulled the alarm from its mount (correctly, not breaking it), and saw that it had a simple plug on the back connecting it to the power and other alarms. I held my breath hoping that the alarm wouldn't sound throughout the house when this one was disconnected (I probably would have configured it thus), and pulled the plug. No noise. No apparent change at all.

I checked the front of the alarm, and the annoying green "I'm powered" light was off. The red light blinked occasionally, but no faster than it had when I was sneaking around before.

I checked the back of the alarm, looking first for a "reset" switch, thinking maybe I could give the alarm a new "neutral" state. Instead I found a little block of text giving a description of the lights; much of which has gone into this diatribe. The green light is an "armed and on AC" note. The red will blink when using battery power. The red light will blink with the horn on when this is the alarm that triggered the system; noting that the others will simply sound the horn.

I wouldn't describe the sound as "horn" to be sure.

Shortly the alarm chirped at me. This is what happens when the batteries get low. Perhaps some or all of the batteries are low, and that's causing a problem. In the past we've heard the chirping from some of the alarms, and dutifully replaced the batteries. When it happens, I replace all eight of the batteries. I also do this in February, which I understand is not only Black History Month but the month in which we're all to change our smoke detector batteries; I remember seeing it on a sign somewhere.

I pulled the battery from the unit. There was no apparent change to this, either. I waited for the blinking light to return (it blinks about once a minute), but it did not. The alarm was silent.

I returned to the main floor and put the alarm and its battery on a table. I ran to the second floor, where there is a step ladder, and started pulling all of the alarms from their sockets, and the batteries from the alarms. I took all five from the second floor and put them by the first one.

On the main floor, I found a folding chair and pulled the two alarms from the office and hallway, and pulled their batteries, and put them by the others.

During all of this activity, some of them would chirp when the power was removed, but while they still had batteries. This I expected.

What I didn't expect was that some of them tried to chirp or trigger after their batteries were removed. This gave me some morbid satisfaction, as the device would start as fiercely as before, but without lasting power, it almost immediately dwindled in an electronic gurgle.

I left the alarms and batteries on the table, with plans to research the problem later, clean, and reassemble the alarms in an attempt to solve the problem and maintain a state of protection.

We survived the night, with no further false alarms, and no real fires either.