Chirping Alarms

The other night, Sheila and I were both awakened by a chirping alarm.  We're in the midst of furnace problems so I immediately jumped out of bed to go investigate.  

I checked the smoke detector in the kitchen first...  removed the battery...  I still heard chirping so I headed to the hallway.  

I pulled the smoke detector off the ceiling in the laundry room and hallway....  removed the battery...  then headed to the bathroom to relieve myself.  While in the bathroom, I heard chirping again coming from the laundry room!  

My initial thoughts were of an episode of "Friends" when Phoebe has a chirping smoke detector in the middle of the night and removing the battery did not stop the chirping.  Now I was thinking that maybe there was some truth to that comedic episode and perhaps there is a capacitor inside the smoke detector that is storing power even after I remove the battery.  Now I was wondering how I might remedy that in the middle of the night without resorting to Phoebe's remedy of taking a hammer to it.  

As I was fiddling with the smoke detector, I heard another chirp from behind me!  It was the carbon monoxide detector on the wall behind me.  The first thing I checked was the reading on the carbon monoxide detector since we have been having furnace problems.  It was still reading 0 ppm so that was good.  I then removed the batteries from that device and the chirping stopped...  finally!

I reinserted the battery in each of the smoke detectors and headed to bed.  Then I found myself lying in bed thinking about smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.

The funny thing is Sheila and I were just discussing our smoke detectors and our carbon monoxide detector within the past few days.  I think the furnace problems we've had made me think about the effectiveness of our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detector.  

During our conversation, I had realized that my smoke detectors were now more than ten years old and therefore needed to be replaced.  Our carbon monoxide detector was now also beyond the seven year life expectancy so that needed to be replaced too.  I guess the chirping was just a subtle reminder from someone looking over us that we really need to replace these things as soon as possible.

I have a long list of things to do lately because I'm in recovery mode after my hospital visit a few weeks ago (ie, doing as little as possible for fear of triggering these recurring health problems).  The things to do on my long list just keep piling up and I now added one more thing to the list...  replacing the smoke detectors and the carbon monoxide detector.  Actually, this was a priority so it was added to the top of my things to do list.  

I like our current smoke detectors because they are tiny.  They are the First Alert Atom smoke detectors.  They are very small so they are not nearly as noticeable (ie, obtrusive and hideous) as the usual big ugly disk smoke detectors.  During my online search for newer Atom models, I quickly learned that these tiny Atom smoke detectors have been discontinued for some reason.  I don't know why.  We loved them.  I know they worked well because whenever I cooked something that produced the slightest bit of smoke, these alarms immediately triggered which is what you want in a smoke detector.  Seconds matter in the house fire.  Unfortunately, since they were discontinued, I had to find a new product that didn't appear obtrusive while being as small as possible.

I looked at a few articles about various smoke detectors available today.  It turns out that the most highly recommended series of detectors looked pretty impressive.  These recommended smoke detectors were small and looked nice.  Plus, they are wirelessly interconnected.  If one is triggered by smoke, then they all sound.  These smoke detectors have a remote that I will mount on the wall at our thermostat and weather station...  press the button and it silences all of the smoke detectors except for the one at the source of the smoke.  This will allow me to check that area of the house for fire.  Pressing the button on the remote again will silence the triggered detector too.  

This series also has a carbon monoxide detector that works the same way so that was a plus.

I like having smoke detectors in every bedroom plus the kitchen, living room and hallway.  Having them interconnected means we will be sure to hear them if one is triggered on the other end of the house.  This is a big plus for us.  

The kit came with six smoke detectors but I programmed only five of them for now.  The sixth one will go in my observatory when I finally get that project completed.  

Now I just need to mount them in each room.