The detectors I have are only a few years old so I guess I’ll take them down and brush them off.
Gee, such things could never possibly happen in my house –
yeah, I suspect I’d better get the vacuum out too.
I’ve frequently read about the recommendation to vacuum smoke detectors periodically, but I don’t know whether it applies to the ionization type or only to the photoelectric type, where dust blocking the light path could cause a false smoke alarm. Mine are the ionization type for smoke, plus CO detection. The one in the basement was going off intermittently, so I tried vacuuming it out. Lo and behold, that changed it from going off intermittently to going off constantly!! I had to disconnect it, and temporarily replace it with a battery-powered one. However, I think at least part of the problem was that all three of my detectors were already overdue for replacement.
As for spiders, the other thing they’re good for is setting off motion detectors. At least I think so. I had an alarm system in the previous house that consisted of proximity switches on the doors and windows and a couple of motion detectors. It went off inexplicably one day when I was out, causing the monitoring company to call police. They found nothing amiss, and I could find no obvious cause for the alarm. Except there was this spider in the vicinity of one of the motion detectors, trying to act all innocent.
I got to destroy one in the course of my job. Customer returned a defective smoke detector. It wasn’t “beeping”. It was “alarming” and it was a sealed unit with a lifetime (10 year) battery. It went out the back of the store to the convenient loading dock and was abruptly and forcefully introduced to Mr. Blunt-Object. I then refunded the customer’s money.
All my personal smoke detectors have user replaceable batteries so thay can be silenced with far less violence (the one in the back hall apparantly is vegan and objects to broiled steaks and pan fried chicken). All are serviced on the equinoxes.
-DF
This seems appropriate:
My best story about beeping smoke detectors:
Many years ago, the company I was working for sent me to a technical training session in New Jersey. It was held in the conference space of a corporate-oriented hotel, part of a major chain. This was convenient — I stayed in the same hotel, went downstairs for the training, and at the end of the afternoon I could jump on a bus and zip across the river to enjoy Manhattan every evening.
At the end of the week’s training, on my last night there, I was awakened by a very loud crash of thunder. I went to the window to look out at the storm. When I turned to go back to sleep, I glanced at the bedside clock radio, and realized the electricity was out.
I had a brief flutter of panic, because I had to get up early to make my flight, and the dark clock meant I had no alarm. This was 20 years ago, before smartphones and their many apps had become ubiquitous; I had an old Blackberry, so I needed the alarm on the room clock. I fumbled around for the device to check the time, and saw it was around 4:30. That was about an hour before I needed to wake up, but without the clock’s alarm, I couldn’t return to bed.
I sighed in resignation: I guess I’m up now. I didn’t want to risk a shower in the dark, so I cleaned myself as best I could with a washcloth wipedown, got dressed, finished packing, and headed out.
The corridor was absolutely pitch black. I used the dim light from the Blackberry to navigate to the stairwell, and carefully carried my suitcase down two flights of steps to the lobby.
There, I found a couple of other guests hanging out with their luggage, evidently on a similar schedule as me. More importantly, there was a large group of hotel staff gathered around the concierge station, listening to the manager as he ran through a series of instructions, laying out a game plan for how to deal with the situation. You two, get a box and go into the restaurant and come back with every candle you can find. The rest of you, if you have a flashlight in your car, take turns going out to get them. And so on.
Then I started hearing the chirps. Curious, I left the lobby to explore, following the sound into the big hallway leading to the corporate conference center. The staff had already put out some candles here, on the side tables, so there was just enough light to navigate by.
I found the first chirp: a ceiling-mounted smoke alarm. It was a big square model, and it was making the typical “my battery is dead” noise. I assume it was an institutional type installation, wired in and powered by building electricity, with a battery only for backup. That battery, evidently, was now dead, and the smoke detector was non-functional.
More chirping. I kept exploring. Every smoke alarm I could find was emitting the same warning.
Now, here’s a big wrinkle in the story:
I didn’t work for just any company. I worked for a major online travel agency, one you’ve all heard of and almost certainly used. This hotel chain was one with whom we had a special relationship — I was staying here essentially for free, paying out of pocket only for taxes and meals (to be reimbursed later). And I was discovering that this particular hotel had some serious issues with its emergency plans and framework.
To recap:
- None of the emergency lighting worked anywhere in the building, as far as I could tell. There was no backup battery power in any of the units when the electricity failed. The whole building was pitch dark, except where incidental light filtered in from outside through a window.
- The batteries were also dead in the smoke alarms, everywhere I checked.
- There were limited emergency supplies on hand in the building. Staff were being asked to retrieve personal flashlights from their vehicles if they had them.
- To mitigate the darkness, staff were placing candles in the common areas. When I returned to the lobby, I saw tea-light candles had also been set on the treads of the staircases. Open flames. In a building with no functioning smoke detectors.
- And guests were continuing to stumble down into the lobby, using their phone screens as flashlights, or with no light at all, unaware of the candles underfoot.
At this point, I grabbed a yellow pad and started making notes. I didn’t want to interfere, or panic anyone, but if something happened, I wanted a record of the situation.
Thankfully, there were no significant incidents. A couple of people stumbled in the dark on the way down, bumping elbows and knees. But after another ninety minutes or so, when the scheduled taxi arrived to take me to the airport, dawn was well broken, and the candles had been removed.
When I got back to the office, I contacted the people responsible for the relationship with the hotel chain, and I gave them a full report. They were disturbed by the details; the hotel was clearly out of compliance on a number of legal obligations, and it was merely good luck that nothing really bad had happened. They promised to escalate.
I didn’t hear anything for several weeks. Then I got a message from an executive, to the effect of, We talked to the hotel, there was no problem, they had a full emergency plan and they executed it, nothing happened and nobody was hurt, you’re overreacting, this case is closed, don’t ask about it again. It was obvious political bullshit; the relationship with the hotel chain was more important than unequivocally holding this one hotel accountable for its failures.
However, I did notice that this hotel disappeared from our online listings for about six weeks. Something happened behind the scenes. They just didn’t want to make any kind of confession about what had gone wrong and what they’d done about it. I was already extremely cynical about the moral emptiness of big companies, and the compromises people make to serve their masters, but this just further carved my cynicism into stone.
Anyway, point is, when I hear the chirp of a dead smoke alarm, even today, I get a flashback to that hotel lobby, and the awful realization that we were one careless kicked candle away from setting the whole goddamn place on fire.
At least some of them have a “deactivate” mechanism. There’s one in my house that warns it’s a permanent deactivation; probably easier than the sledgehammer, though, and environmentally a bit safer.
I didn’t see it until after the thing (evicted outside) eventually shut up on its own, however. It’s not conspicuous, and it’s hard to think while that thing’s blaring at you. Possibly just as well, since it maybe only does need vacuuming, and if I had seen the deactivation right away I’d probably have used it.
When I was in the tire place getting my summer tires put on earlier this year, there was the beeping. Not my store, not my problem. I can ignore it until my car is ready.
The story was, a pipe burst in the sprinkler system which damaged stuff. One of the stuffs decided to respond by beeping. The alarm company was scheduled to repair the beeping on Thursday. It was Saturday. Surprisingly, none of the employees in the lobby were wearing their ear protection from the garage.
A few years ago I came home from a trip and became aware of a beeping noise. I tracked it down to the smoke detector in the front hallway. So I got out my stepladder and popped it open to pull out the dead battery. Then I had to go to the drawer where I keep my batteries, praying that I had a 9-volt in there; I knew I had plenty of AA and AAA since I use them a lot, but I wasn’t sure if I had ever restocked my 9-volts since I last changed the smoke alarm batteries. Fortunately, I had one left, so I was able to replace the dead one. Then I made a note to buy more 9-volts, because sure as shit if I didn’t one of the other alarms would die on me.
As I read this, a beeping started in another room.
Fortunately, it’s just my phone I left behind, sounding the alarm for my medicine. But, for a second there…
And this is part of why I have Nest smoke detectors. No “Let me sing you the song of my people” when I cook or take a steamy shower. Just “Heads up. There is smoke in the master bedroom.” and I can tap the nearest detector as they self-network to silence the caution. And no PIP! at 3AM. If one has a low battery, they all just quietly glow yellow.
What happens if/when your internet connection goes down?
(Serious question. I don’t know whether the things are designed to still work, if differently, when not online.)
They do not need internet or cloud service to function. Only loss would be the inability to use the monitoring app.
Ah. Thanks. That’s sensible.
I can’t begin to recall how many times I’ve seen a news item about a fire that sonorously concluded with, “And there were no working smoke detectors.” Maybe the reason is that they go off when you cook, or maybe the reason is that, when the battery gets low, it goes God-awful crazy even if it is in the middle of the night?
My city has an ordinance? policy? that all permit inspections require checking for working smoke detectors. Recently my hot water heater was replaced, so the city inspector was asking about my smoke detectors. I showed him one on every floor, one in every bedroom, and CO detectors near combustion appliances.
He was pleased, and we discussed a bit how easy it is to having working ones, and how common it is not to. I joke about how they use their light sensors to only warn of low batteries when it’s dark, but in reality the bits of trouble described in this thread are totally worth the warning if one ever goes off “for real.”
Wow! I’ve lived in Chicagoland for over 15 years, and I’ve never seen an inspector of any kind even though I’ve replaced my water heater, furnace, and central AC system.