Where There's No Smoke

I have a hate/hate relationship with smoke detectors. I know the lifesaving potential is worth any annoyance, but whoever designs these things is an evil genius. We have three smoke detectors within about 10 square feet of the house, and none anywhere else. So when one of them starts its "low battery" beep, it's very difficult to tell which one is beeping.

A few weeks ago one of them was beeping, and after I sat underneath each one of them long enough to identify the culprit, I removed the battery and checked it. The battery was practically brand new and very charged, so I have no idea why it was emitting periodic squeaks. So in the end I just unplugged it (since they are plugged into the house power too) and stuck it on the counter.

Today I noticed that the light on it was still flashing, and I decided to take the battery out, since it wasn't doing anything just sitting there. So now, being unplugged and having no battery in it, it started beeping again. What? Okay, maybe there's some inner battery as tertiary power. So I put the battery back in, thinking it was some warning that there was no battery. And it kept beeping.

I tried to open it, to see where any extra batteries may be hiding, but it doesn't look like I can do that without breaking it. So the smoke detector is now hidden away in our basement between some pillows, just beeping away every few seconds.

The end.

Comments

Ann said…
That happened to us, too, with three in one week!
March 20, 2011 at 6:54 PM
Jen said…
they should just put that on the box. "In case of inexplicable or unnecessary beeping, immediately place between two pillows." works very well for me, too.
March 24, 2011 at 6:19 AM
Louis Eugene Carabini said…
..Droid users new to smartphones may be disappointed in its battery life......... There is at least that bears noticing though--battery life.If you actually your battery mileage will vary. The phone has to be powered up to be of any use beyond a glorified paper weight so poor battery life could be an Achilles heel for the Droid invasion like the bacteria that took down the alien invasion force in War of the Worlds.Mobile phone manufacturers like to talk about battery life in terms of talk time vs.
March 29, 2011 at 3:53 AM
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