This is I guess important, but it’s driving me nuts.
Bought a house. It was built 5 years ago. So within 30 feet of each other, there are 3 smoke detectors. Two bedrooms, with a short hallway between them.
Fine. You know where this is going…
One starts beeping. I can’t tell which one. So.. TO THE LADDERS. Well they are hard wired. So this is strange…Why the beep.
They have a @##@@$% battery backup in case the power goes of. Apparently. So I still need to replace the batteries in these hard wired smoke detectors.
Oh, I’m a tall guy which is nice, and the new house has 10’ ceilings which is nice. Until the stupid smoke detectors that are hard wired go off because their battery backup is getting low.
We have LED lights everywhere. Why in the @#@#@$ can’t they put a flashing LED on a smoke detector so you can tell which one is ‘low’ or whatever. I currently have two smoke detectors siting on the floor because when I finally found and shut up the beeping culprit, I didn’t have it in me to replace the others.
I’m not into conspiracies but, really, smoke detectors and battery manufacturers must be talking.
I’d put new batteries in the other two while I was at it. They may be about to go off shortly also.
Smoke detectors frequently infuriate me; because IME they give a whole lot of false positives. I have by now a sizeable collection of killed smoke detectors (you’re not supposed to just trash them, and they keep having the hazardous disposal days on Saturday mornings when I have to be at market) because they Would Not Shut Up when there was no fire. I did manage to resurrect one because when I shook it a couple of flies flew out and then it became quiet; but I can’t leave that one in its normal position during possible-fly season because for whatever reason flies always seem to get into it there. But most of the false alarms can’t be fixed in that fashion.
Check the installation date on them. The detector elements (made of krypton or something) are only good for ten years. They beep when ten years is up, signaling the need to replace the entire unit. That goes for hard wired as well as battery-only units.
They usually do, the problem is that instead of flashing once per second when the battery is low, they only flash when they chirp. So you have to walk around staring at every detector for a minute trying to catch the short flash when the chirp happens. In the middle of the night.
I’ve had false alarms on multiple detectors that were way short of their expected life. I had an entire batch of three (packaged together) all of which started false-alarming within less than a year; the first one within a couple of months.
Smoke alarms used in household applications are usually listed under UL Standard 217. The 8th edition of UL-217 requires smoke alarms manufactured after June of 2024 to have MUCH better resistance to false alarms (toasters, air fryers, frying burgers, etc.). I always suggest to people having nuisance alarms that they simply bite the bullet and replace their existing smoke alarms with newer units. It costs a bit and it can be a PITA, but it can improve their quality of life significantly while maintaining safety in the home.
Note: Many smoke alarms available on Amazon and other sites are not actually UL-listed. Check twice if your goal is to get an improved unit.
Oh yes. They are sitting right next to them. The smoke detectors that are sitting on the floor. I need to drag the ladder around to get to it. Put the battery in, plug it it and screw it on.
Assuming it’s one in each bedroom and one in the hall, and assuming the bedrooms have doors, close the bedroom doors. Wait in the hallway for the next chirp. If it’s muffled, it’s a bedroom. Open a door. If the next one is muffled, it’s the other bedroom.
If you’re talking about being set off by cooking, there are two kinds of smoke detectors – photovoltic and ionizing. The photovoltic kind are less susceptible to being set off by cooking, and are better at detecting a smouldering fire. The ionizing kind is better at detecting a flaming fire, but a smouldering fire is more likely to go unnoticed for an extended period of time.
I think that’s true of carbon monoxide detectors, but not exactly true for smoke detectors. They do recommend replacing your smoke detectors every 10 years, but that’s mainly to ensure the electronics are in good working order, and there are ones with non-replaceable batteries that last 10 years that pretty much force you to replace them. But otherwise they should keep functioning longer than that unless they’re actually broken.
The old smoke detector in my hallway was manufactured in 1999 according to the date on the label. I did finally decided it would be best to replace it last year, but it did still work at 25 years old – I set it off many times while cooking. But I took the opportunity to replace it with a photovoltic alarm to alleivate that issue.
I’m not, actually. I’ve had that happen occasionally but can readily deal with that one. I’m talking about the things going off for no apparent reason whatsoever; in at least one case at three in the morning in a night in which I already wouldn’t have gotten enough sleep, without being hauled out of bed to simultaneously try to shut the thing up and to check the house from basement to attic crawl space including in all the closets and cabinets in case there was actually a fire, despite the fact that none of the other multiple detectors was going off and I couldn’t smell or hear anything suspicious. (If those things hadn’t been true, I wouldn’t have been checking the house, I’d have been throwing the cats and dog and myself outside.)
They where all by their lonesome. On a different floor. No cooking involved.
So, I’m afraid I have a new thing that sort of infuriates me. But mostly makes me shake my head and chuckle.
Religious folks might want to stop here.
My Wife and I are in the process of moving to a new town. Most are stuff is still in boxes, somewhere… So we are not cooking.
My Wife found a breakfast place. Sounds cool. We went.
It’s a cult of some sort of ‘Christianity’. We got there, ordered and then went to the empty back patio. I need quiet since I’m hard of hearing.
Then music starts blaring.“Um, what?” I go in and get them to turn it down. They did for perhaps 5 minutes.
This place has an auditorium. We dared to venture in. It’s packed with a Christion rock group on stage goin to town. God, Pray, Jesus, was pretty much all I could make out. The full light show and music mixers, everything.
Well that is strange. I’ve literally never had that happen. Well, not with a smoke detector; it did happen once with a CO detector, which I think was like what @sunacres mentioned with the detector element getting used up.
After I posted I recalled you mentioning having a wood stove and wondered if that might be the culprit, but I’m guessing that’s not it either. My grandparents apparently had a problem with their wood stove setting off the smoke detector, which just led them to get rid of the smoke detector.
I have a line-powered CO detector. I was replacing the old one, but apparently the plastic connector is so strong and stubborn in its refusal to perform its core connect/disconnect existential trait, that something in the wire broke or disconnected up above my ceiling while trying to force it loose. I’ve taken wire cutters to get the damn thing off, and now face the tedious dread of cutting into my ceiling to try and trace where the hell the wire broke so I can splice a new one in.
We had an experience with those types- apparently when they reach their useful life, they will beep until you take them apart and replace them. I suggest the new 10 year sealed units- they last ten year, then you buy more. No hunting for a 9v in the middle of the nite.
My credit union offers a promotion where you can purchase electronic gift cards through their online banking app/website and receive instantaneous cash back on the transaction. The amount varies depending on the store, but most are around 4% - 6%. Since that’s more than I get from my credit card, I’ll often take advantage of this offer to buy myself gift cards to pay for purchases I was going to make anyway and save a few bucks.
So the other night I didn’t really feel like cooking because I was tired from doing yardwork earlier in the day, so I decided to order from Doordash. I checked my credit union’s app and saw they’re offering a whopping 15% cash back on Doordash gift cards. My order came to just over $40, so I figured I’d buy a $15 gift card and a $25 gift card (you have to buy them in fixed denominations; they don’t allow custom amounts) and collect a total of $6 cash back. I bought the $15 card and collected $2.25 back, but when I tried to buy the $25 one I got a message that said “You have exceeded the limit for this promotion”. Nowhere did they say anything about there being a limit!* I’ve purchased multiple gift cards back to back through this app before with no problem, but apparently this specific promotion came with restrictions. If I’d known I was limited to only one would have at least bought a larger denomination gift card.
*Ok, they probably did somewhere buried in the terms and conditions that I didn’t read.
I have several of those, and they were a life changer. No more balancing on ladders in the middle of the night to displace the batteries, no more false alarms, and no more buying a pack of 9V batteries each half year. And they weren’t expensive, I don’t remember the exact price but it was under €50 for a three-pack.
They where all by their lonesome. On a different floor. No cooking involved.