Solved!

After several hours trying to sleep with all the doors closed and with the fridge beeping endlessly and despite turning it off and on I finally managed to ring a shop at 9am. I explained the situation and asked what I could do. I was told that there should be a button somewhere on the back of the fridge to press in and disable the alarm. OK, I looked but there was no circuit board at the top back of the fridge and no button. But in the base I could see a light flashing….

I asked the man on the phone what to do because I’d disconnected the fridge from the mains. He said look for a button. I bent down and found a smoke alarm (a normal household one) just resting on a bar at the back base of the freezer compartment, partially hidden behind the motor which was hot, I pressed the button on it and it stopped! I went and got my hubby to show him and he picked the alarm up! It wasn’t even attached to the fridge freezer. It must have been placed there either by the manufacturer or by the shop we bought it from. I’d spoken to the guy who told me about a button and he explained that the compressor in the fridge freezer must be faulty, as it was getting hot trying to cool the fridge too much. Now I have a fridge that needs replacing and a dusty smoke alarm that is giving a beep every few seconds (the battery in it must be low), I’m just glad I made that call! Plus the cats can finally sleep x

My smoke alarm went off

A loud beeping then ‘attention fire’ ‘attention fire’!

First I thought the fridge alarm was going off until the voice started. Then I remembered we had replaced our old smoke alarm because it had started to beep every five minutes even when we changed the battery.

So where was the fire? No sign, not a sniff or sight of smoke. No hot spots, I’d turned off the heater, the lights were mostly out. The kitchen door was shut and I’d only had the kettle on for a cup of decaff coffee.

What could have set it off? I wonder if a spider has moved in? I stayed awake till 7am waiting for it to go off again. No smoke without fire? So tired! Be alarmed, be very alarmed!

Alarmed?

Why did my smoke alarm just go off? No smoke, no pans left on, no flames rising from the computer. No fire outside in the garden. There must be a reason. I randomly asked Google the question ‘can spiders set smoke alarms off?’, I got the answer above. We tried blowing and detritus out of it, but when hubby put it back together it did it again. Why? I don’t know, but we will be buying a new smoke alarm tomorrow.

Beep beeeep!

I came home from panto rehearsal (I was just watching) and there was a loud beeping coming from the house. I got in and hubby shouted over the noise. He said it had just started and he couldn’t find where it was coming from. We narrowed it down to near the gas boiler. He had already turned off the boiler, also unplugged the fridge freezer below it, unplugged everything in the kitchen and switched off the central heating.

He had also taken the battery out of the smoke alarm and carbon monoxide alarm. He was at a loss of where the noise was coming from.

What to do? Half an hour if searching. We thought there might be a smoke alarm fallen behind the fridge freezer, hubby pulled it away from the wall. Nothing, except dust. So we rang the emergency gas engineer.

He arrived after an hour. The sound was so loud. He checked everywhere. He said it sounded low down from the fridge? He moved it.. The noise stopped!

Modern fridge freezers are fitted with alarms! Who knew? They can go off for all sorts of reasons. Not enough ventilation, unbalanced, damaged door seals, freezers needing defrosting. I think we need a new fridge freezer. It’s too warm in the fridge and too cold in the freezer.

Never rains but it pours!