The beeping smoke detector. Most commonly, interconnected smoke alarms sound nuisance alarms. Maybe you were cooking or simply making some toast and ALL alarms are now going off. What can you do? Turning off the power will not work and removing all of the batteries and ripping them off of the walls and ceilings is ridiculous. Believe it or not, the manufacturers built-in a “silence” function for the alarm to quiet things down until the smoke clears.

Step 1: Temporarily Silence Smoke Alarm

The alarm which first sensed the problem and initiated the alarm will have a red light blinking.   The rest of the detectors will likely still have green lights.   Find this detector and push and hold the “silence/test” button for 2-3 seconds or until the alarm silences.   (HINT: The initiating detector is most likely the closest detector to where the burning is).  You should not need to hold the button for more than 5 seconds since doing so will initiate a test

Step 2: Locate the initiating smoke alarm flashes red

Once you located the correct initiating alarm with the blinking red light and pushed the button, the alarm should now be temporarily silenced.   This should give between 8-10 minutes to allow the smoke to clear.   After that time and the smoke has cleared, the red light may still be blinking because the initiating alarm remembers it sensed a problem and will continue to blink red until reset.  You can push and hold the “silence/test” button again for a few seconds and the light should reset to green.   You don’t have to reset the light to green for the smoke detector to function normally but it is a good idea to do so so you can track an initiating alarm in the future.  

Find out more information about First Alert here.

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