jmood

The strobe light and the noise are VERY VERY VERY strong. I am not exaggerating. They would wake the dead. The light is not any old light, it is something special, though I'm not technical enough to describe it, I know it's not a regular light. And it goes off in the living room. I can hide behind 2 closed doors with my hands over my ears and still be squirming from the noise.
Plus the whole thing goes off often and falsely.

Sally Redux

The one in my old bedroom flashed about every 30 seconds, however the ones in the new place don't seem to.

Sally Redux

Do you have adequate ventilation?

Lion in Winter

The sounds is meant to a) wake you up and b) drive you from the building. The light does the same thing, and is there for the deaf, among other things, so it needs to wake up people who can't hear.

If the device is faulty then you make a case for getting it fixed, and take it up with the owner if necessary.

Lion in Winter

Ventilation can be an issue. Our old one at work used to go off in response to dust being blown about. The source of the dust is not necessarily in the house though - any intake will do it.

I was a "fire marshall" for our floor.

jmood

This is the part I'm trying to figure out. I'm big on not being unfair. As it stands the alarm is unfair to me because it goes off often and falsely. As a consequence I get a migraine and a migraine means I totally lose at least 2 days out of my life and the third is at best a functioning mehh day

So does anyone have knowledge rather than guessing whether disabling mine would affect the whole system?

Sally Redux

I would first try reporting it as faulty.

jmood

My apartment is not the one that is triggering the false alarm. I don't know which units have been. There are more than 200 units in my building.

I am big on ventilation. I always have an open window. And I'm big on cleaning, so minimum dust indoors.

Sally Redux

*snaps to attention*

Also vapour from the shower can do it if it's sensitive.

jmood

Useless. The building knows faulty alarms go off. And I am sure they get rapped by the local fire departmt too becuase the fire engines turn up for nothing.

The friggin little unit is right here in my apartment and it seems it's in my control. I mean, it should be easier to deal with things in my control than deal with this HUGE animal that is my building management.

Lion in Winter

I know exactly how loud and bright they are. I really do.

And yes, depending on what you did it could easily affect the whole system because they are often interconnected - hence a fire in one part of the building makes the whole thing go off. Tampering with it, you might set the alarm off or break a vital link and you really don't want that on your conscience.

If there are many false alarms, report the sucker early and often, make yourself a nuisance until they fix it.

Lion in Winter

Find the owner, not the management company. The owner will be listed somewhere.

If the fire department is constantly coming out, they are charging for that, it isn't free. At least it isn't in Illinois. Use that to get to the owner too.

jmood

Ah! Light bulb goes off.

I have been told by a building employee there is a design flaw with my building, the windows are huge, heavy and near impossible to open for a normal person, and that there are many residents who NEVER open their windows as a result. Maybe it's those units + dust that do the triggering.

Anyway, irrelevant to my question. PLEASE help me disable the frigging little thing with the BIG guts.

jmood

And shred my nerves during the process. And spend days of my time...
I know who the owners are.
Not worth the aggro

RICH

Ah - the red/green diode that indicates the unit is still alive? Not what I thought OP meant by strobe. Strobe is a bright white light that goes off when there is a fire, in case the occupant is deaf, right?

Anyway, if the thing is going off all the time, when there is no fire, I would call 911 each time and after a few false alarms the Fire dept will make the landlord sort it out. (speaking from experience as a hotel manager with dodgy detectors in the past).

eta lots of new posts. I see it is a whole building system. The individual detector probably unplugs from the ceiling like a light bulb, but that would cause a fault alarm in itself.