False Alarm / Smoke - how to deal with it.

[JamesC]

Hello All!

This may sound like an ODD question, but nonetheless, here goes.

We purchased our house pre-built around 30 years ago. It came with two hardwired smoke detectors - one on the upstairs hall wall (between two bedrooms), and the other on the ceiling of the downstairs hall between the kitchen, family, dining, and living room. Note, this is a small Cape Cod, <1200 sqft, so the “downstairs hall” is less than 12ft long with 4 entrances on it.

Anyway, the layout of the house is such that even the smallest amounts of smoke (like pizza dripping cheese in the oven) or even steam (I’ve been making waffles a lot, recently) will set off the downstairs smoke detector - photoelectric First Alerts, with the Ring listener nearby.

Finally, the question - Lets say I’m making waffles, and the steam sets off the alarm. What sequence do I follow to successfully silence both systems and cancel any response in the least amount of time? Do I head to the back door keypad, enter my house code, and hit disarm, then go to the smoke detector with a long wooden spoon and hit Mute? Or the other way - hit Mute on the smoke detector, and then back to the keypad to disarm it.

When it happened yesterday - I hit mute on the smoke detector, then opened the app and hit Disarm (I think) in that. I couldn’t think what I should do on the keypad at all.

I want to know how to do this quickly & efficiently *before* I activate the Monitoring package I’ve had for several months now… And I need to let my wife and house sitters know the “best procedure” as well.

Thanks.

[Chelsea_Ring]

Hey @JamesC. Great question to ask! It’s always best to make sure you are disarming your system in time in order to avoid false alarms. In addition, who would want to be interrupted while making waffles? Don’t need them getting cold.

The best thing to do first is to always disarm your system as soon as possible in the event of a false alarm that you know is a false alarm. If your keypad is closer than your phone, go to the keypad and put in your 4 digit code and then hit disarm. If you have your phone on you, I recommend disarming from the Ring app’s dashboard. I personally have my phone normally closer, so I use my phone! From there, you can silence the smoke alarm itself in order to ensure it does not set off again, which it should not right back to back after disarming.

Please note that in the event of a false alarm when it comes to the smoke alarm, if you are unable to disarm your system within the 30 second window before our monitoring station calls, you will need to make sure the first contact answers the phone. If you’re the big waffle maker in the home that may set it off more than others, I recommend making sure you’re the first emergency contact! Unlike for breakin’s, our monitoring process for smoke alarms is to call the first contact, and if they don’t answer, we will send the fire department, and then alert the second and third contact. Therefore, if the first contact doesn’t answer the phone after you were unable to disarm the system, the fire department may show up to your door. This should not happen though, as you seem diligent in disarming your system in time every time.