BEEP!..60 seconds…BEEP!..60 seconds…BEEP!..
And why is it always the one upstairs that you need a ladder to get at? You know, the ladder that you had out yesterday to replace the flourescent bulbs in the light fixture in the kitchen? Why didn’t it run down then?
Damnit, I want answers!
::Yawn::
Has the Super Bowl started yet?
The battery on my carbon monoxide detector chose to begin its death throes in the middle of the night. I was awakened by an intermittent beeping noise; intermittent as in every minute or two, so it took me a while to figure out where the noise was coming from when I finally looked up and saw the blinking red light. I dug out the stepladder and owner’s manual (which had fortunately been provided along with several others when I rented the apartment), rummaged through my supply of batteries to locate the right ones, and replaced it.
Since mine chirp for more than a day before the piercing beep, I’ll WAG that they are making their indicator noise during the day but you can’t hear it over the ambient house noises. Other than that, I got nothing. I feel your pain, but mine never go out at night.
Our CO detector AND our smoke alarms are all having battery issues at the same time (early morning, late night). I just wanted to come in and commiserate here. The CO detector started making noise during the coldest days of the year, when we couldn’t shut the furnace off or go outside. I was truly scared by that - “Let’s see, should we stay inside and die in our beds, or should we go outside in -35ºC weather in our pajamas? Choices, choices.”
Oh, it’s even more fun if you have a dog who is sure the noise is a small creature, which must be barked at and chased down. :rolleyes:
It’s even more fun when it goes off randomly and you don’t have a ladder to get at it twitch
I am so glad I had a dayshift that day…
Fire departments all over the US advise you to change your clocks, change your batteries. Had you done it then, it wouldn’t have bothered you in the middle of the night.
Oops - I think we normally do that, but didn’t last fall. I guess it’s our own damn fault.
I think they might do better if they didn’t play up the “change your batteries so you and your family don’t get burned to a fiery crisp” angle and instead promoted “change your batteries so your smoke detector doesn’t go ‘chirp . . . . . . . . . chirp . . . . . . . . . chirp . . . . . . . . . chirp . . . . . . . . . chirp’ in the middle of the fucking night.”
As part of my job, I go to peoples houses and apartments. I hate it when their smoke alarms are chirping. It would drive me crazy during the day as well.
It’s your own damn fault.
You should not buy any item designed by Mr. Murphy.
Well, ground squirrel chirps are quite similar. And ground squirrels are among the most barked-at rodents imaginable. Especially because they can be dug after, providing hours of muddy-nosed butt-in-the-air entertainment. We used to sit around and bet on the dog or the squirrel and drink ice tea.
My smoke detector only loses its little battery-mind at night, also. EVERY SINGLE time it’s happened, it’s been at night! I’m sleeping peacefully, then beep…beep…beep… And I have trouble reaching mine, as well, as it’s juuuuust over my fingertips. I can usually flip it down and catch it, but can’t put it back up after putting in a battery without getting something to stand on.
There’s a simple explanation: temperature. A battery’s output is the result of a chemical reaction, and so tends to decline a bit with lower temperature. An aging battery’s voltage can be expected to first dip below a set threshold at times when the battery is coldest - IOW, at night.
I realize the Pit may not be the ideal place to introduce sanity, but why don’t you dudes replace all batteries once a year, say on New Year’s Day? AFAIK, all alarms’ batteries last for at least a year; the cost to replace each isn’t much; and it will avoid such annoyances.
Is this too sensible to be considered?
Personally, I don’t have any alarms. False alarms are too common. If my house starts to burn down, I’m pretty sure I will smell it pretty quick.
You know why you always hear those stories of someone’s house burning down and they had a smoke alarm with no batteries in it? Do you know why they have smoke alarms with no batteries in them? Because smoke alarms are sadistic vile creatures. They always chirp in the middle of the night. So you get up and yank it down and take the battery out. It stays that way for a while and then you think “this is unsafe, I need to put a new battery in that thing and hang it back up.” So you do, and that night while sleeping peacefully it starts chirping again. So you repeat the process, “okay, maybe it was a bad battery.” Once you put it back up the third time and it once again wakes you in the middle of the night with it’s evil incessant chirping, you decide that there’s a good chance the dog/cat/neighbors will wake you in event of fire and you don’t need the damn thing anyway.
My family’s house burned the fuck down and the smoke alarms never went off. Not only did they have batteries in them, the batteries were perfectly good. At my apartment, though, the smoke alarm goes off every single time I make bacon. And there’s no battery, it’s wired into the wall, so it’s not like I can even take it out before I commence baconage. They’re vile, evil machines.
Our detector’s batteries last went on the Sabbath, when there’s absolutely nothing we were going to do about it. We simply had our festive Sabbath meals, slept, etc., with EEP…[30 seconds]…EEP…[30 seconds]…EEP…
It did encourage us to go visit friends that afternoon, I suppose. In our defense, we’d just moved in and had no way of knowing when the previous owners had changed the batteries.
Ours is by the bathroom, and goes off if the shower is too steamy. And we have cats who cannot tolerate to be either shut out of the bathroom or shut into the bathroom. In our next house, we’re putting a cat door on the bathroom door.
Long ago, I had a serious explanation from a fireman: when you test them, you only test them for a chirp or two. Thus you’re not extracting a large charge. When they go off for real, they need to act for a considerable time, requiring more charge. Which might not be there. So change the batteries regularly.