Wednesday, January 6, 2010

CHIRP! CHiRP! Chirp! What is THAT Chirping?

Yesterday, I'm sitting at my desk working on a church lesson.
You have to understand that from 5:30 am until about 3 pm, my house is silent......as in S.I.L.E.N.T.
There is no TV on.
There is no music playing.
It is gloriously silent.  S.I.L.E.N.T.
Like right now......the ONLY thing I can hear is the ticking of the clock across the room.
Oh and the impending snow storm blowing in.

So as I am reading and studying yesterday, there is a distant chirp.
I pause and wonder if I heard something.
A few minutes later, I think I hear that again.
But I am so engrossed in what I am doing, that I barely notice.
Finally, it DOES get my attention.

WAIT!  Is that a SMOKE DETECTOR chirping?

I HATE chirping smoke detectors.
When the battery is dying, the chirp every 30 seconds (usually at 3 am).

Oh yes, it IS a smoke detector.
I get up from my desk to find the stupid thing.
You have to understand that we have eight or nine smoke detectors in this house.
Dying smopke detectors chirp every 30 seconds UNTIL you are looking for them.
Then you stand under EACH one training your ear for the chirp to see EXACTLY which one is dying.

Oh yes, I've dragged a barstool up and downstairs to plenty of smoke detectors, risked life and limb to replace the 9 volt battery, only to discover it's the one DOWN the hall that is really doing the chirping.

Chirp.......Chirp.....Chirp...Chirpetty, Chirp, Chirp Freakin Chirp.
Once you are on a mission to find the every 30 second chirp, it then moves on to an every 2 minute chirp.
So you hear the chirp, you run in the direction of the sound, you stand under the smoke detector and crane your neck...because you can't HEAR the chirp if you aren't LOOKING up at the detector. 
And then..........silence.
No chirp.
Just as you get a crick in your neck and start to roll your shoulders, CHIRP!
Wait, was it the one you are standing under?  Or did that come from downstairs?

After 20 minutes of going up and down stairs, I finally found the chirping misfit.
It was in the laundry room cupboard.
Yes....the laundry room cupboard.
No, it wasn't installed in the cupboard.
It's one that I ripped down off of the cathedral ceiling in my room when it wouldn't freaking stop chirping!

I know,  I know, we could light up a cigarette in bed (except we don't smoke) and start a fire in our room and the whole house would burn down and everyone would die because I took that smoke detector down.  Do NOT tell the fire department.......or they will remove the children from my home.  Wait....tell the fire department.

But it really does make sense to have not one, but two smoke detectors in the laundry room cupboards.  I can't remember where I ripped the other one down from.

That's where all the firecrackers and pop bottle rockets are and if they should spontanteously combust, we are soooo safe!  Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. chirp.  We'd run right by the exploding cupboard on our way out to the garage.  Or maybe, we'd take a different route.............better practice that at our next fire safety meeting.  So really..........I know what I'm doing.

And besides....why not keep the smoke detectors right next to the 9 volt batteries.
It makes it so much easier to replace them.  I'm a genius!
Found the chirping, replaced the battery, and threw it back in the laundry room cupboard.  Done, done, and done.
We're all safe now.

I can go back to S.I.L.E.N.C.E.

8 comments:

valerie said...

Oh my gosh that is sooo true about the dang chirping smoke detectors! I think we have one in the bathroom drawer. Just in case. You know. :)

Unknown said...

I love the chirps! Yea chirps!

I hate them so passionately!

Mama Badger said...

I hate that chirp. We have a smoke detector from our hallway that is sitting on the counter waiting for a new battery. It's the one that always goes off when we fry something. So, I'm neglecting it. Because the only thing worse than the chirp? When the thing goes off and you're in the middle of cooking dinner.

Tracie said...

I'm laughing because the same thing happened to us. We had it stashed in the storage room in the basement. My nosey MIL found it and flipped out.

Stacy said...

The one in my bedroom has gone off twice now. Not chirped--gone off! As in... beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

First time it was 2:00 in the morning and I had to find the ladder to climb up to the ceiling to unplug it and pull the battery out. Replaced the battery after a couple of weeks, but still didn't put it back up on the ceiling. It just sat on my bookshelf.

Then...the first day that Richard was gone again, it went off at 5:00in the morning. WENT OFF AGAIN! I took the battery out again and haven't touched it since. I think it's possessed.

Unknown said...

When a smoke detector chirps, you either have to replace it or change its batteries. You have to check if there is an indication that says if the old battery is dead. If there’s none, it must be changed annually. If this doesn’t solve the chirping, you may have to replace the entire alarm with a new one.

Odessa Hanton

Unknown said...

Now, that was funny and crazy at the same time. Haha! There are some smoke detectors that really create an awful chirping noise. And if you want to keep yourself from hearing it, the only thing you need to do is to respond to it. You know, the system is just waiting for you to save it. Hehe! It only needs a new battery to stop "whining" and to get back to its original job.
Lida Combs @ #1 Security Services

Unknown said...

How I wish there was one that you can wire near your fluorescent so it charges itself and you won’t have to worry about the battery going out. I can certainly relate with you guys about playing hide-and-seek with the chirping smoke detector, and it is definitely not fun to do during the wee hours of the morning.

Todd | ProTech Security