Why…
Smoke alarms, of course.
On Tuesday night, Jan 1, the night before I had to get up at 5am and go back to work for an ENTIRE day, our smoke alarms sounded at 12:30am. All of us (Robert’s son is with us this week) jumped up out of bed, ran around the house trying to see/smell if there was a fire, where it was, were we in danger, was it the carbon monoxide (CO) alarm, etc. We could not find anything wrong, (thank goodness), got the alarms reset (they did not trip again over the next 15 minutes) and the individual Carbon Monoxide (CO) detectors had not alarmed. Everyone back to bed, except me who ended up wide awake and decided to look for the smoke alarm manuals in our house papers. Believe it or not, I found them except they only matched 2 of the 9 detectors installed. The downfall was I did not read them immediately. I finally got back to bed about an hour later.
But the evening’s entertainment wasn’t over yet!
At 3:30am, round two commenced. (Did I mention all of the alarms are interconnected so if one goes off every other one of them goes off and you can’t tell which one started it?) Once again, we found no problems and this time all 3 of us promptly sat down at our individual computers searching the Internet for possible causes. (After all, isn’t that what every 21st century family does in a crisis?). Back to bed around 4:15am. Needless to say, the 5am get up was tough - so tough, Squirt did not move a muscle, staying in bed until breakfast.
Round three: 6:00am – time to go to work!
Round four: 7:20am
Round five: 8:50am - after this event, the boys (including Squirt) left to go ATV’ing and I had the house camera up monitoring the situation for the day.
During lunch, I called fire consultants, contractors, an electrical engineer (my brother :) ), stores, etc. gaining information about
- what could be causing this? - one alarm going bad
- how can I test which of the 9 units is going bad? - no way to test except disconnecting each one at a time and waiting until it trips again
- where can I get replacements(?) - I did find one store with over 20 in stock
- how do I replace them? – various answers
Rounds 8-9 (or so – I lost count): periodically throughout the day with the granddaddy of them all starting at 3:00pm and did not stop. (Lucky Squirt was in the car for the day or he would be deaf.)
The boys picked me up on the way back through town and we went directly to the store buying 9 new detectors. Of course, when we got home, (I had visions of the neighbors calling the fire department busting down the doors to save the house. Too many movies!), the alarm was still sounding and the only way Robert could stop it was by pulling units off the ceiling and disconnecting the AC power (some people would have flipped the circuit off prior to power removal but Robert opted to bypass this due to the modular electric quick connector). This method of “testing” worked and we found detector #7 was the bad unit. With AC power removed, it continued to whine as long as the battery was in it.
Robert asked me if I still wanted to replace all of the units since we had figured out which one was bad. Hmmmm…let me think…after a long day at work on about 2 hours sleep, the decision wasn’t difficult and being the reasonable person I am I said,“Yes – all of them now.”
Since he miss most of a night's sleep also we compromised. Seven were completed that night and the 2 that need a 20ft ladder to change will wait until this weekend.
I didn’t even make to the newscast before falling asleep….
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