# My house is beeping. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 17, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956 "2011-10-17T21:00:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/1 "2011-10-17T21:00:26Z")
Something is beeping in my house, and I can’t figure out what it is. It sounds very much like a smoke alarm, but we have three (two upstairs and one down), and I’ve stood under all three of them while the beep goes off in some other part of the house, and it doesn’t seem to be any of them. I’ve stood next to the microwaves and the kitchen timer–no dice. I went out and stood in the garage–faint beeping inside the house. When I go outside I can hear a faint beep from inside. When I go downstairs it sounds like it’s upstairs, and when I go upstairs it sounds like it’s downstairs. It’s not the computer. If the spouse didn’t hear it too, I’d swear it’s some sort of high-tech “Tell Tale Heart” thing going on…except that I haven’t buried anybody under the floorboards, and I’m pretty sure neither the cats nor the spouse have either. I hope whatever it is, it’s not trying to tell me about something potentially dangerous. And I hope it shuts up soon. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/2 "2011-10-17T21:03:19Z")
My cellphone emits some strange beeps when the battery is almost run down. You could turn off the power to the entire house (or one area at a time) to see if that narrows it down. If it still beeps without AC, at least you know it’s something battery-powered. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/3 "2011-10-17T21:03:40Z")
Is it a steady, incessant beeping? Also, never assume the cats haven’t buried a body. ---
**Author:** ![Covered\_In\_Bees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ab992/32.png) [@Covered\_In\_Bees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covered_In_Bees)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/4 "2011-10-17T21:07:59Z")
You sure it’s not [one of these?](http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8c52/?srp=5#tabs) ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/5 "2011-10-17T21:10:56Z")
> [@Asimovian](#): > > Is it a steady, incessant beeping? > > Also, never assume the cats haven’t buried a body. No, it’s an intermittent beeping. Fairly long interval between beeps, and it doesn’t seem like the interval is consistent. True, true…I would never put anything past these cats. 😃 And no, **Covered\_in\_Bees!** , it’s not one of those. We haven’t had any visitors except my dad (who wouldn’t even know where to find such a thing), and the spouse is as mystified as I am (and I believe him). ---
**Author:** ![PacifistPorcupine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@PacifistPorcupine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PacifistPorcupine)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/6 "2011-10-17T21:15:44Z")
I would do what Musicat suggested and turn off the power to the house. Also, you could try closing all doors and windows and seeing if you can isolate what room it’s coming from. ---
**Author:** ![Zulema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/db5fbb/32.png) [@Zulema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zulema)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/7 "2011-10-17T21:20:00Z")
This happened to us. We finally thought we isolated the correct smoke alarm and changed the batteries. BEEP BEEP OK, so it’s defective. We replaced the whole alarm. BEEP BEEP Look down instead of up and there was the problem: the plug in CO alarm with a battery back up. DUH Other things that have mysteriously beeped in our home are toys and old digital watches with alarms. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/8 "2011-10-17T21:22:34Z")
Is your house in a flood plain, or is there any reason you might have a chronic water issue? Is your house fairly new? When we moved into ours, the original owner had moisture detectors installed in the basement. He forgot to tell us about them, so we were half crazy until we found them. It did save us from a mold problem, though. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/9 "2011-10-17T21:24:54Z")
Happened to us in a hotel once. A single tiny beep, repeated at 90 second intervals. I traced it back (only so many places to check, in a hotel room) to a battery-powered burglar alarm on the window. The beep was a “low battery” signal. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/10 "2011-10-17T21:36:25Z")
> [@picunurse](#): > > Is your house in a flood plain, or is there any reason you might have a chronic water issue? Is your house fairly new? > > When we moved into ours, the original owner had moisture detectors installed in the basement. He forgot to tell us about them, so we were half crazy until we found them. > It did save us from a mold problem, though. Nope, no flood plain that I’m aware of, the house isn’t new, and we’ve never had any problems with water before. I just got back from listening to the beeps in a quiet room–they’re definitely intermittent. The room I was in had a clock with audible ticks, so I just counted the seconds–during the period I listened, the longest interval was 30 seconds, and the shortest was 6. I turned off the air conditioning thinking it might be the thermostat, but no, it kept on beeping. Not quite ready to turn off the power to the whole house yet. Spouse suggests replacing all the batteries in the smoke detectors (probably time to do that anyway) so I think I’ll try that after work when I can go get some new ones. I still don’t think that’s it, though. The only other time I heard beeping like that that wasn’t the detectors was the UPS on my computer, but I don’t have that hooked up to anything right now. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/11 "2011-10-17T22:17:11Z")
Is it just one beep per interval? How long are the beeps themselves? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/12 "2011-10-17T22:31:55Z")
I think you mentioned that it sounds faint. Are you even sure it’s coming from your house, and not from outside somewhere. A nearby car? A neighboring house? A common characteristic of these electronic beepy things, is that they produce a square wave beep. The way your ears can tell where a sound is coming from is by measuring the phase shift in the sound between the left and right ears. If a sound lasts long enough, it often helps to turn your head from side to side to localize the sound. None of that works with square wave sounds, though. That’s why, no matter where you are in the house, it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else, or else it sounds like it just pervades all of surrounding space. Sometimes, you can localize it by moving from place to place and just noticing where it gets louder. So if it sounds faint everywhere in the house, maybe it’s coming from elsewhere? [second-hand anecdote] We used an audible beep from an underwater sound generator as part of the training regime for a pair of bottlenosed dolphins. (This was from before my time working there, so I’m just relating the story I heard.) The beep was placed alongside some object in the water (like a ball, or a frisbee, or a surfboard, etc) and the dolphins were supposed to learn to go to that object. It didn’t work, and caused frustration among humans and dolphins alike. They (the humans, I think) finally figured out what the problem was – it was a square wave, and the dolphins couldn’t tell where in the pool it was coming from. If anyone is interested, I might be able to find a cite regarding the project we were working on, but I’m sure there wouldn’t be any mention of the square wave problem. [/second-hand anecdote] ---
**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/13 "2011-10-17T22:36:47Z")
We had a beep a couple of years back. It sounded exactly like a smoke alarm but wasn’t. Finally, after lots of comedy tiptoeing around the kitchen with our ears cocked, we traced it to this gadget - of course the name of it’s gone right out of my head, but it tells you whether there’s wiring at a given point in the wall so you don’t drive a nail into your wiring. (Phase tester?) It was in a drawer, with something else leaning on the button at a funny angle so that it occasionally triggered the beep. Got a gadget? ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/14 "2011-10-17T22:43:43Z")
Cordless phone (not cell phone) out of its cradle with low battery? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/15 "2011-10-17T22:46:17Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > We had a beep a couple of years back. It sounded exactly like a smoke alarm but wasn’t. Finally, after lots of comedy tiptoeing around the kitchen with our ears cocked, we traced it to this gadget - of course the name of it’s gone right out of my head, but it tells you whether there’s wiring at a given point in the wall so you don’t drive a nail into your wiring. (Phase tester?) It was in a drawer, with something else leaning on the button at a funny angle so that it occasionally triggered the beep. > > Got a gadget? That’s a studfinder with a wiring detector or a contactless voltage detector\* FTR, those contact free voltage detectors are kind of ok for telling you that there IS voltage, but I would never trust them to tell me that there isn’t voltage. They’re okay for some very basic troubleshooting tight spaces, but they do give a lot of false negatives. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/16 "2011-10-17T23:00:04Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > Got a gadget? Good idea. How about opening all your drawers? ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/17 "2011-10-17T23:02:53Z")
Eh, it’s probably just a bomb. Wait long enough and it’ll stop on its own. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/18 "2011-10-17T23:03:42Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I think you mentioned that it sounds faint. Are you even sure it’s coming from your house, and not from outside somewhere. A nearby car? A neighboring house? This happened to me just a few weeks ago. For about two or three days, there was an intermittent beep about 2 minutes apart. I drove myself crazy trying to find it. I thought it was a smoke detector or CO detector I had forgotten about. When I was upstairs, it sounded to me like it was coming from the basement. When I was in the basement, it sounded like it was upstairs. Finally, after a lot longer than I care to admit, it dawned on me that it might be coming from outside. Sure enough, two doors down, it was a neighbor with, I assume, a smoke detector needing new batteries. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/19 "2011-10-17T23:16:26Z")
Ahhh! Things that go beep in the night! Run! The robots have launched psychological warfare against us! Er, what was I saying? ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956/20 "2011-10-17T23:23:15Z")
Android mice seems the most obvious answer. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-house-is-beeping/599956.md?page=2)