filed in Daily Life
4 AM Smoke Alarm Wake-up Call
I was jolted out of bed last night from the blaring of the smoke alarm. There was no fire, just a dead battery. My dog was whimpering. I dragged out the step ladder, which I’m shaky on even when alert, and struggled to replace the battery, a multi-step, unintuitive process. This happened last June, also in the dead of night. What a flawed system. Advice greatly appreciated.
Never Sleep by Valentina Angeloni
Discussion
8 comments for “4 AM Smoke Alarm Wake-up Call”
Leave a Reply
About this Site
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR is a guide to surviving, thriving and sometimes just getting through a single day. Created by Wendy Braitman (more…)
Follow First Person Singular
Greatest Hits
© 2010 First Person Singular. 
I don’t replace my smoke alarm batteries only because my apartment complex does it. The rule of thumb is to replace it during daylight savings time twice a year. I would recommend maybe just putting it in your calender for six months from now and ideally set it as a reoccurring event.
Twice a year? What a drag. But connnecting it to changing the clocks is a great idea. Thanks!
This happened to me about 3 years ago, the night before the start of the fall semester. At about 3:30 AM, smoke alarm goes off. Of course, it’s a bit unnerving at any time, but in the middle of the night it is especially so. I walked around the house, sniffing like a bloodhound, I felt all the walls for warmth, I looked for any smoke. Nothing. I finally called the fire department and described everything (and yes, I had also recently changed the batteries). The fireman was very pleasant, assuring me that there was probably no fire, but they’d come out if I’d like. I felt a little silly and just disconnect the batteries. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get any more sleep that night (and was greeting my new crop of students with some bleary-eyedness). I checked the owner’s manual later and it turns out that some of these smoke detectors only last about 5 years. Mine seemed to self-destruct about 5 years and 1 month (it had a 5-year limited warranty).
I looked at a few sites online which said that you should replace your smoke alarm every 10 years. Yeah, right?!!
I live in Brisbane, Australia, and our fire service (department) advocates changing the battery with the changes of season. So we do ours every 3 months (we try to remember, anyway), mainly because so many of the fires reported are in homes with flat batteries in the detectors.
When the smoke alarm went off, I thought about ripping the whole thing off the wall. But I guess that would be a bad idea.
My smoke alarm started chirping about 4 months after I moved into my present home (I’ve lived here for 7 years). I pressed the reset button, and that stopped the chirping for a couple of days. Then it started all over again. I had my apartment manager take a look at it, and they even replaced it (twice), but the occasional chirping still continued. Here’s the thing, though – it only happened when the battery was in it. So, throwing caution to the wind, I started taking the battery out, and leaving it out, and it hasn’t chirped since. The alarm still works (I proved it when I burned dinner one evening.) I just hope that my building never really catches fire. I also hope that the chirping wasn’t due to some other undetected problem in the building.
I don’t think I have a reset button. Hmmm? I’ve got to check into that.