Good Morning!

So it's about 4:50 am and I'm sleeping away, having a lovely dream, and suddenly I'm woken up by a horrible loud "aggghhhh" noise from somewhere in the house. By the time I'm awake there is no sound anymore, so I get up to investigate....nothing out of the ordinary upstairs, nothing strange downstairs, nothing strange in the basement....then I hear it again....it's clearly the upstairs hardwired (ie wired into the electrical system of the whole house) smoke detector!!!!!! And it's clearly malfunctioning - the house ain't on fire and it's only going off intermittently....my 1st thought was "crap, I can't call the FD at 5 in the morning!!!!! They will come in a fire truck and wake the whole neighborhood!". It went off again for about a sec - then I remembered what the FD does for this problem* - shoots compressed air into the offending sensor, sometimes they get dusty - so a whole house search for the canned air I bought just for this purpose ensues. I finally find the canned air - having not heard the alarm for a good 15 mins - I spray the air into the sensor on all sides, get it good and "airy". Then I read the can.....do not spray in enclosed spaces as vapors may ignite. Great. How will I know, I just sprayed it into the smoke detector!

I guess the good news is that I know the smoke alarm will wake me up!
Here's hoping it won't go off again, only thing is that now, I'm up for good.

*About 5 years ago, on the 4th of July, I was polyurthaning a rocking chair I was painting for my classroom, and the same thing happened, only it was the one in the basement, I was pretty sure it was the fumes from the spray on poly but it kept going off after I stopped the painting. Finally, about 8:30 in the evening, just as it was getting dark, I called the FD, what else are you going to do? I can't just take the batteries out! Every townhouse in this area has the same system so I knew they must know what to do. They came, with their truck and full gear, and took their big FD fire extinguishers, and shot air into it and whala silence.