Smoke alarm batteries
Beep! Yesterday afternoon one of the smoke alarms started the intermittant beeping that indicates when the battery is getting low. These are smoke alarms that are actually wired directly into the electrical system of the house, but have nine-volt batteries in them for backup (in case the power goes out). No biggie, I knew we had newer batteries.
Beep! Well, a bigger task then I thought; I couldn't figure out at first which smoke alarm was beeping. We have a total of seven in the house, one down at the bottom of the stairs and six others upstairs. And due to the acoustics in our house, I was moving from one alarm to another waiting for the telltale beep, but everytime I'd get close to one the Beep! would chirp out, seemingly from behind me.
Beep! I finally traced it to the smoke alarm in my bedroom. Popped out the battery, replaced it with a fresh one. All good, the beeping stopped. Case closed. Had dinner, went to bed.
Beep! Wha—? Huh? I roll over in bed, echoes from whatever dream I'd been having shredding away in the onset of consciousness. Peer at the clock; 4:40. In the morning.
The hell—?
Beep! Oh, shit. Another smoke alarm is warning me its battery is too low. I do not want to get out of bed for this—
Beep! Beep! Uhhhh... If I'm not mistaken, that was two different beeps. Son of a bitch.
Beep! So for the next 30 or 40 minutes I'm stumbling around the house, tring to catch a smoke alarm in the act, failing miserably, swapping out fresh batteries only to find I don't quite have enough because I just know that all the damn batteries have chosen 5:00 in the morning to sputter out, and all the while Beep! Beep! and I can't figure out which ones are chirping.
Beep! Screw this, I get vicious and pull the batteries out of all the smoke alarms. They're wired anyway, and I'll just buy brand new batteries tomorrow to make sure I'm covered.
...Did it work? Did the beeps stop? Looks like I was—
Beep! No. No no no nonononononononononononono.
It dawns on me that we have a carbon monoxide detector plugged in to the wall in the hallway. It's supposed to beep when it detects high levels of CO gas... and I think there's a battery in it too.
Check it... sure enough, the damn thing says "Err" on it's tiny beeping fu—ahem, LCD screen. Okay, pull the detector, pull the battery, and...
Silence.
Ever notice how peaceful it is at 5:45 in the morning?
Comments:
Your wife writes:
HAHAHAHAHA
The only other time that thing beeped is when B. pushed it during a "rest" time when i was in the bath and freaked out. He *finally* copped to it about an hour later.
btw, your brother said "well written".
Do we really want to come home later in the week if this stuff is going on in bachelorland? THANK GOD it didn't happen when i was home alone with you out of town :P
Comment by Your wife at 2006-03-28 06:53:43
Drox Pox writes:
Hi, seems that you got annoyed...
One saturday morning, or sunday...
I was sleeping nicely, dreaming.
Suddenly, there was a loud alarm going off just downstairs - thought some kind of piolic or whatever... really loud. As I ran downstairs, I just teared apart the loudspeaker put next to the door. it's connected to the security alarm...
Then, typed in the code and was all cool =]
But that was crazy - i dont know why i teared it apart =]
That was really shocking - the sound is very very loud...
Still questioning myself - why did it go off? nobody/nothing was in the house and security alarm was switched off...
Comment by Drox Pox at 2006-03-28 07:04:33
Jake writes:
HAHAHA....sorry to hear that, but we've been there. I didn't know I had one hard-wired in my attic that had battery backup until I started hearing beeps from my ceiling of my living room. I finally crawled up into the attic to find the stinking thing, hardwired behind my chimney pipe through my attic. And let me tell ya, that was a pain in the ass to get to.
I'm thinking of disabling the thing.
Comment by Jake at 2006-03-28 13:49:06
Mrs H writes:
Are you sure your CO alarm wasn't beeping because you had a gas leak?
Comment by Mrs H at 2006-03-28 17:34:33
Jon writes:
Since we didn't die, yeah, I'm sure :-)
Besides, it doesn't say "ERR" when there's a leak, it has a specific indicator.
Comment by Jon at 2006-03-28 18:46:11
Jennifer writes:
The exact same thing happened to us, although with only one smoke detector. Unfortunately it was in our bedroom, which has a 25-foot ceiling. Husband stood on a ladder & banged on the *&*! thing w/ a broom handle until the battery fell out. It's still out, actually.
Comment by Jennifer at 2006-03-29 10:34:11
Robert Carran writes:
Our power went out 4 nites ago for 2 hours and our smoke alarms have chirped nite and day ever since I replaced all the batteries and it won't stop i am very close to ripping them all out so I can get a nites sleep
Comment by Robert Carran at 2006-05-05 20:24:46
freekeon writes:
Don't laugh - this company will MAIL you enough batteries each year!! Neat huh?
Comment by freekeon at 2006-05-26 11:37:45
Anonymous writes:
The smoke alarms went off in my bedroom area/ replaced the batteries but the crazy things continued to chirp. With a little help from reading info on the net I found out that you must DUST or Vacuum our hard wired alarms to rid them of dust or bugs. Who knew!
Comment by Anonymous at 2006-06-03 11:56:28
Maria writes:
Thank you so much for your write-up!! We were ready to smash all of our smoke detectors (it's 11pm!!!) cuz the smoke detectors have been beeping all day & I told my husband - let me see if I can find anything on the Internet!! I found your write-up and asked my husband if we had a carbon monoxide detector. He yelled OH MY GOD!! We have one in the hallway. He took a look at it and it was beeping. If I didn't find your article, we may have been up all nite or would be replacing smoke detectors in the morning. THANK YOU!!!! :-) Going to bed now - tired.
Comment by Maria at 2006-06-05 23:16:51
LauraB writes:
Why, oh, why didn't I find your article earlier? At 5:30 AM (seems to be the preferred time for alams to malfunction), the chirping began. It HAD been the smoke alarm months ago, so I immediately went to try and fix it. Nothing. I decided to wear earplugs. Now, as I'm getting ready for work at 8am, I see your article and I think... DAMN IT! The CO detector!!! Lo and behold, it was flashing BAt, BAt, BAt at me...
On a side note, does anyone actually keep extra 9-volt batteries around the house? I know I don't.
Comment by LauraB at 2006-06-23 07:55:34
TJ writes:
Thanks God for the writer who finally figured out that the beep was not the smoke detector, but rather the carbon monoxide detector. I went stir crazy trying to change and rechange the batteries in my smoke detector. When I read the experience, I immediately knew the smoke detector was not the culprit, but rather the CM detector. Thanks-
Comment by TJ at 2006-06-26 15:56:54
Barney writes:
Thanks a ton for that info! I've been up from midnight till 1:30 changing batteries in the smoke detector and not getting anywhere. I would love to send you something as my token of appreciation!!!!!!!
Comment by Barney at 2006-07-18 02:00:44
Laurel writes:
I don't think I have a co but I have a smoke detector that continues to beep. I changed the battery. Help!! Do I need to buy a new one? Even when I had the detector down to change the battery, the hard wires were beeping.
Lauel
Comment by Laurel at 2006-07-22 05:56:28
jenc writes:
Help, my smoke alarm keeps going off--the loud beeps not something that can be ignored; the kind that sends you storming around the house with a broom. I fanned all the smoke detectors but nothing helped. I finaly have taken 2 alarms completely down--unhard wired them.
