Last week I heard one of the batteries in the smoke alarm beep. Â It was one upstairs. Â I told Hubby about it and then we both forgot about it. Â Fast forward a couple days, or actually nights, and I woke in the night to the battery beeping telling us the battery needed to be changed. Â I was half sleeping so at first I thought it was me dreaming. Â Then it beeped again and again and I knew it was true. Â It was beeping. Â Then I thought if I laid there long enough maybe Hubby would do something about it….nope. Â He’s been working 16 hours days so there was no rousing him to get him to do it.
I laid in bed thinking just forget it and go to sleep…I couldn’t. Â Then I started to wonder if I needed a ladder. Â Certainly I didn’t want to haul that upstairs in the middle of the night. Â Finally I thought I’d try my chair in the sewing room. Â So off to the sewing room..got the chair and yes, I could reach it. Â Only problem…the alarms and new and I couldn’t get the cover to snap off. Â Half sleeping I finally realized that I had to push a button and the battery door would pop open. Â I pulled the battery out, chastised myself for waiting so long because I could be sleeping if only I had gotten up right away. Â The chair went back to the sewing room and I went back to bed.
A half hour later Hubby’s alarm went off. Â Then I couldn’t get back to sleep. Â I heard him get ready, heard him make coffee, heard him drive out of the driveway. Â UGH. Â Finally I fell back to sleep and you’ll never believe….ANOTHER upstairs smoke detector started beeping because the battery had to be changed. Â REALLY??? Â By then it was 5:30 so I just got up. Â I pulled the batter out and decided to just sew.
I sewed until 6:45 went downstairs and you’ll never guess. Â A third smoke detector upstairs started beeping because of a low battery. Â OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!!!! Â Three smoke detectors in a matter of five hours. Â I guess when they guess the life of a battery, they must be spot on.
Anyway…Hubby replaced ALL of the batteries in ALL of the smoke alarms. Â It put poor Ruby into a mess. Â She can’t stand any noise that she doesn’t know the origin of including beeping smoke detectors.
She was clinging to me. Â She was drooling and she definitely didn’t have a “happy” tail.
Well I am hoping that’s the end of the smoke detector saga. Â I really shouldn’t complain because we could have awoke to the alarms going off and an actual fire. Â I just found it so unusual that three smoke detector batteries could all go bad in a short five hour period.
Same thing happened to us! 3 smoke alarms started beeping in a span of less than 3 hours. Next time we will be ready for them!
Poor Ruby and you for having to deal with it during the early morning hours of sleep. The smoke detectors can be very annoying, but they do save lives and homes. Glad that you now have them up and running and will not have to worry about them for awhile.
Oh my goodness, I’ve got a smoke detector story as well but I’m saving mine for a blog post next week. You’ll have to come read about it soon. So glad yours was an easy fix…. I hope.
Those beeping smoke detectors are really hard to locate. Poor Ruby! Is that a folding port-a-crib I can see behind her, full of kid stuff? Looks interesting!
Sorry about your smoke detector woes but SIGH I’m married to a retired fire captain and I’ve had a LIFETIME of drills on that. We replace our batteries twice a year when the time changes. That’s a good way to remember to do it. Ours are wired into the house w/ battery backup but that’s not good enough for the captain. AND our dryer vent gets vacuumed several times a year. He’s rescued several in his career and had some very sad stories about casualties so I’m with the program. I drive him crazy with quilting and he’s on me with fire drills. I hate the shrill sound when they are “tested” after replacement. Would burst the ear drums. Stay safe esp. with little ones in the house.
When I was young and lived with roommates, we had a smoke detector that was integrated into wiring that also called the fired department if it was activated for too long. One time, it went off and we weren’t cooking and smelled no smoke. We couldn’t turn it off. The fire department showed up within 5 minutes, banging on the door front door and clattering upstairs with all their heavy equipment on. They found the culprit was not fire or electric, but a spider running around caught in thr detector. I’ve they turned everything off and reset the detector, there were smiles and “How bout thats!” when they realized two of them had been to the same house 20 years before, and saved it from a fire. They were glad to see it was still standing, and had working detectors too.
my Bernese Mountain Dog hATeS the sound of the smoke detector going off for any reason. he howls, shakes and nervously pants around the house until the noise has been silenced. Ollie knows Ruby’s pain~
Faye is terrified of that beep!