Smoke alarms and midges?

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Ben McNevis
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Location: Scotland (for) The Brave
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Smoke alarms and midges?

Post by Ben McNevis »

Long saga: We have a house that sleeps 10 and we had an audit by the Scottish Fire Service about 2 years ago. One of the consequences was that we had to have a total of 12 interconnected smoke alarms instead of the previous 4. Since adding the additional smoke alarms, we have had sporadic problems with false alarms.

Waking guests up in the middle of the night with painful noise is the last thing that they or we want. After it happened for a second time, we decided to replace all 12 alarms about a year ago.

Then it happened again about 6 weeks ago, so I replaced the offending alarm with another new one.

It happened 2 nights running last week. Guests were understanding initially, but then understandably cross when they had the second night of disturbed sleep.

On the first occasion, they couldn't get hold of us on the phone and not knowing whether there might be a smoldering fire in the roof, quite rightly called the fire brigade. This was probably the biggest excitement in the village so far this year. The local retained fire officers attended, inspected and declared it safe. Now, that the guests have filled in our feedback form, they have mentioned that the fire officer suggested that midges might be the cause.

Is that a thing? Do midges really set off smoke alarms?
Cheers, Ben
www . scotland-cottage.com www . scottish-cottage.com


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greenbarn
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Location: The Westmorland Dales, Cumbria

Post by greenbarn »

I know that smoke alarms can be triggered by small spiders, so maybe it’s possible that a cluster of midges could do the same thing?
I’ve no idea if it’s just optical smoke alarms that are affected by spiders, or both optical and ionisation types - one for google!
stewart-sandeman
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Post by stewart-sandeman »

I rent a cottage in one of the most midge infested parts of the Scotland - The west coast (www.ardnish.org) - or perhaps it just seems like that!

I have never had a problem with midges setting off the alarms, or heard of it as an issue before. Hope that helps.

Peter
Little Villa
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smoke detectors

Post by Little Villa »

Sorry, I don't have a solution, just wanted to say that they put in a smoke detector in the toilets where I used to work to stop sneaky smoking, after which it used to go off sometimes when people had a poo! :shock:
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fredarth
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Smoke Detectors

Post by fredarth »

Not been on here for a while so sorry for the delay in replying so sit back and I will tell you my story

I was a Fire Prevention Officer with the NHS and had a problem with midges in smoke detectors (6 calls to a geriatric hospital one night) We tried everything we could think of even painted the detectors black but nothing worked. I eventually got in contact with a lecturer who specialised in entomology in an agricultural college and he suggested a Vapona anti ant pen.

It leaves no marks but the little bs won't cross it.

We tried it and it worked but the proof was when we had 2 alarms the the same hospital but found that these detectors had not been treated

I should add that the hospital concerned was in the countryside and the midges where in fact "Harvest Thrips"

We fixed that and then - no more "midge alarms"

Hope this helps
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