For the past few days I have been waging a battle with my smoke detectors. The motherfucker downstairs would not stop beeping once every 45 seconds for four minutes every few hours. First I changed the battery and it still beeped. Then figuring it was defective, I bought a new one and the new one fucking beeped. We have two “interconnected” alarms and I figured maybe it was the upstairs one that was screwed up and was making the downstairs one beep. So I replaced the upstairs one with the old downstairs one. The downstairs one still beeped. This morning I thought that perhaps the battery that came with the new one was hosed and that is why even the new one was beeping. That wasn’t it.
So finally I am perusing the First Alert FAQs and read this:
Now who could be that stupid? Why me of course! I never thought to check the CO detector plugged into the wall socket right near the smoke detector :smack: The chirps are so freaking loud and piercing I couldn’t tell it wasn’t coming from the ceiling.
I am just feeling so stupid yet satisfied to finally have it figured out that I had to share.
Well, if your CO alarm’s been sounding for a few days, it’s no wonder you weren’t thinking straight.
Let’s see, since buying a house I’ve:
Run over the hose with the lawn mower.
Thawed a frozen pipe without first checking if the ice had ruptured said pipe-it had. :smack:
Needed several seconds to figure out the mower wasn’t kicking up rocks, I was over an underground hornets’ nest. Amazingly I escaped without a single sting.
This is just off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more.
Why, just this weekend I built a charming little white gate for our previously gate-less front yard. I couldn’t figure out why it’s so twisted after I installed it, though. I mean, when I built it it laid perfectly flat on the floor, right? You know, the “Plywood over concrete and gravel” floor in the basement of my 100+ year old house?
Oh, wait. I think I see what went wrong.
Helped a friend install a cat-flap into the door to their basement.
Took the door off the hinges, brought it outside, set it on sawhorses. Carefully measured the location to get it centered, and traced the pattern form. Searched to find new blade for the saw. Sawed out the hole. Carefully marked locations for the mounting bolt holes. Searched to find proper sized drill bit for the electric drill. Drilled holes in marked locations. Installed both sides of cat-flap, aligned, checked with a level, inserted bolts, tightened down nuts, lock nuts, etc. Put tools away. Searched for & found where door hinge pins had been moved to. Carried door back inside house and start to put it back on the hinges.
And discover that we had reversed it, and the cat-flap is neatly installed a few inches below the TOP of the door.
Actually what the deal was…I kept hearing the chirping, upstairs so I changed the battery in the upstairs detector. A little while later, I heard it again. But it wasn’t long enough for me to “trace”. So I changed the battery in the stairwell detector. Then I heard the chirps again. I changed the batteries in the basement detector. Still more chirps, aaaarrrghhh!
Meanwhile, a breaker switch had broken in my box and the power was out in one room. I was fully aware of this. The power was out for about 24 hours in that room. The room where the CO detector was plugged in.
When the CO detector is not plugged in - or plugged in to a socket with no power - it runs on battery. Then the battery dies. As it dies, it lets out death chirps. Slowly, quietly, and sporadically. It was the last place I looked.
That reminds me of something I repaired/replaced in the house one time - I can’t remember what it was, but I recall thinking, “Okay, don’t get this on backwards now,” and proceeded to do so - twice. Sometimes you just call it a day and come back to it later.
BWAHAHAHAHA! That’s hilarious. Because I totally sympathize with your pain. I’ve done that at work fabricating things out of stainless steel. A muchmore expensive accident…but the feeling of D’oh is just the same
I do this in every DIY project I attempt. At least one miscut, reverse measurement, backward installation, or other mistake that forces me to discard materials, make another trip to Home Depot, or just redo the whole dumb thing. It doesn’t bother me anymore, I just budget for my one mistake in every job.
Weekend before last, I decided to Do Something about the the overgrown English Ivy / Japanese Honeysuckle Patch that makes up about half of our front yard.
So I went at it with a weedeater.
Turns out, it’s really an overgrown English Ivy / Japanese Honeysuckle / Poison Ivy patch.
Baracus, I have a nearly identical story - except that in mine that infernal chirping was caused by a bell in my parrot’s cage. Boy, did I feel like an idiot when (after several hours) I finally managed to track down the source of that unbelievably irritating sound (by sheer dumb luck - I was walking past her cage when she rang it).
Well, Pepper isn’t pining for the fjords - but she probably is pining for her bell. THAT toy went into the garbage ASAP! The bell was so small, I hadn’t even noticed it was on the toy when I bought it. Now the only parrot toys she get to play with are bellless. If she wants to drive me insane, she’s going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, by screaming incessantly. That’s irritating, but at least I can’t mistake it for the smoke detector!
Runner-up: While up in the storage space above the garage, I put my foot through the garage’s drywall ceiling and took out a healthy chunk of it. Well, you know what they say- there’s a second time for everything.
Winner: Our dishwasher wouldn’t start, no matter what we did. It was old anyway, so we just decided to replace it rather than get it repaired. We bought a new one and had it delivered. And then, in what I still consider to be my greatest homeowner accomplishment ever (yes, my standards are low), we installed it ourselves. I think it took us about seven hours, whereas a pro would probably have done it in about 45 minutes, but even so, we were very proud of ourselves when we were finished. We fired it up, and… it wouldn’t start. After a brief soul-crushing moment, I brightened up and said “Wait! The wall switch!” The wall switch had been off- we realized MIL had probably inadvertently turned it off when helping do our dishes on a recent visit. I turned it back on and, Hallelujah! It worked! We did it!
And then, the reason for the old dishwasher not working dawned on me…
I have a good one, we have an old turn of the last century furnace for steam heat, originally coal, fitted with a gas burner. One winter we got the pilot lit, but couldn’t get the gas burner to turn on with the thermostat. Call the local plumber, he pokes around for 15min and flips a little black toggle switch on the burner control unit, bingo, we’re heatin with gas. Quite the bill for flipping a switch, but I can’t deny the man his wages.
The real kick in the teeth, though, was the next month’s heating bill, where I realized that I pay monthly for a “worry free” service contract with my gas company, who would have come to flip the stupid switch for free.
The line from the “very first dishwasher we ever bought” (big moment for us) to the disposal wasn’t working properly after installing it myself. I spent several hours making sure the line was angled properly, had no clogs, etc. Eventually we just lived with the water gathering in the bottom of the dishwasher for, oh, about a year.
After that year or so the old disposal went out, so I replaced it…and discovered that the plug in the disposal inlet was never knocked out.
Reminds me of the first (and only) time I decided to switch out an electrical outlet, without turning off the power first. :eek: After all I was using a screwdriver with an insulated handle, what can go wrong? How about touching the wrong things inside the electrical boxt? I felt a jolt but lived (obviously). But my beautiful insulated screwdriver did not look like a screwdriver anymore!
What, no stories about how you put the wrong detergent in the dishwasher, discovered the kitchen floor covered in suds, stared in despair and then remembered the Bible, which led to you thinking “If Balaam went to town on his a$$ I can clean the kitchen floor with mine. Wheeee”
And you learn that only works in sitcoms.
My parents made the ultimate one when they installed a catflap. I told them “The neighborhood is filled with raccoons, don’t do it.” They assured me that the door was arranged so that while the cats could go out, no local wildlife could get in.
I told them “Raccoons are smarter than you think they are. You’ll wake up to a big boor coon sitting on the kitchen table.” They insisted it wouldn’t happen.
Fast forward a few years–I guess the raccoons had gotten quite clever by then–sure enough they heard a weird noise at night and when my father went to investigate Dillinger the masked bandit was happily sitting on the kitchen table partaking of our groceries.
