Do smoke alarm batteries ever die during the day?

AbbysMom

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3:00 in the morning and the incessant beep starts.
Next you have the struggle to figure out which one it is and turns out it was the carbon monoxide detector. I'm wide-awake now. Guess I will catch up on some threads.
 

lil maggie

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Sorry, I'm not laughing at you! I just went through that today! Only I was lucky .. it was my smoke alarm and it went off at 2pm
I was running around the house trying to figure out if it's the carbon monoxide thingy or the smoke alarm. Of course, I unplugged the wrong thing first and the annoying beeping kept going! It's so loud it could drive you to drink so I frantically looked for a 9v battery and then couldn't reach the fool thing without a ladder at the ceiling. I'm sooo glad mine didn't go off while sleeping!

I forgot to add...while almost killing myself climbing the steps with a ladder, all the noise from the smoke detector isn't enough. It drives my dog crazy and she's barking the whole time at it. Sheeesh!!
 

carolina

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Oh my God - I have a funny story about that!
When I first moved to the US into my own place, there was this cricket in the house... For about 3-4 days I looked for this cricket - pissed off, getting no sleep, ready to run away into a friends house....... until..... that I invited an american friend to search for the damn cricket with me.... It was the stupid fire alarm!
 

clixpix

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Ah...that explains your nocturnal TCS visit!
 

kiwideus

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Originally Posted by WellingtonCats

OMG! LOL! I've never heard of the monoxide detector....should we have one of those?
IT won't hurt to have one.
 

pookie-poo

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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the sadistic engineers who designed them, figured out a way to make the batteries fail in the middle of the night.

My mom has me convinced that you should always change the batteries at daylight savings time change (both on and off.) Since I've been doing that (for several years now) I haven't been awakened by the darn thing in the middle of the night anymore. I also change all my clock batteries at the same time, so I just don't have to think about it.
 

gailc

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Its seems that when it gets a bit humid the smoke detector that is above the stairway to the bedroom goes off. Not every humid day just random ones. I suppose we could move that one to a different location so the middle of the night struggle to remove the battery wouldn't be so hard.
 

xocats

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I have 2 smoke alarms...
one hard wired the other battery operated, but I thought it was hard wired too.

One night a couple months ago, it start chirping....
endless chirping and I did not know why.


Red eyed from no sleep, I finally reached our complex maintenance guy,
who came and checked it, then simply replaced the battery.

Beautiful silence followed.

I feel for you Karen.
 

katachtig

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I don't think they know how to go off in the day time. Ours chirp about every 15 seconds so I can never find it without standing 2 or 3 minutes under each one.

We found out that our carbon monoxide detector will go off if we are reducing wine for cooking. The first time it happened, I thought it was the regular alarm system and tried to turn it off. When that didn't work, I call the alarm company. While I was doing this, I had Much following me around, screaming at me to make it stop. The poor guy who had to take my call got to hear not only the alarm, but this very PO'd cat.
 

rubsluts'mommy

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In the previous apartments I lived in, back in CHicago, the maintenance guys did inspections every six months, and each time, they replaced the smoke alarm batteries. It was part of their jobs. I moved here and no such luck. After nearly three years, one of mine started chirping a few weeks ago. it was the one in the hallway, but I had a hard time telling, as there's one three feet away, just inside the bedroom door... I hoped it was that one (I only had one 9V battery around), and changed it. Peace and quiet ensued. Hopefully I'll be out of here before the others go.

Amanda
 

larussa

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LOL, no I do believe they are programmed just to wake us up during the wee hours of the morning. One time last winter my carbon monoxide system went off and I called the fire dept., when they came it was just a low battery, how stupid did I feel. In my defense it was my first monoxide I ever had so I didn't know any better. I wish we didn't need those things but we really do. I have yet to hear one beeping during the day.
 

gemlady

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Originally Posted by Rosiemac

I had two new smoke alarms installed after i moved in, and thankfully as well as being wired up they have a ten year battery in them.

8 more years to go!
And then they will go off in the middle of the night...
 

butzie

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Do closet hanger rails ever come down during waking hours? Butzie and I don't think so since we were woken up the other "night" at 4 am to see my clothes all over the floor.

How about that stupid beep from the oven? I - stupidly - started the self-clean cycle on the oven 1 evening before I went to bed, not realizing that it would beep, and keep beeping, when it was done. That was at 2 am. Again, neither Butzie and I were amused, but the oven was clean!
 

rapunzel47

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Originally Posted by Rosiemac

I had two new smoke alarms installed after i moved in, and thankfully as well as being wired up they have a ten year battery in them.

8 more years to go!
Originally Posted by gemlady

And then they will go off in the middle of the night...
...right. when you've forgotten that they're coming due...
 
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AbbysMom

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Originally Posted by Pookie-poo

My mom has me convinced that you should always change the batteries at daylight savings time change (both on and off.) Since I've been doing that (for several years now) I haven't been awakened by the darn thing in the middle of the night anymore. I also change all my clock batteries at the same time, so I just don't have to think about it.
When I was up in the middle of the night I was telling myself that would be a good practice to start.


Originally Posted by katachtig

We found out that our carbon monoxide detector will go off if we are reducing wine for cooking. The first time it happened, I thought it was the regular alarm system and tried to turn it off. When that didn't work, I call the alarm company. While I was doing this, I had Much following me around, screaming at me to make it stop. The poor guy who had to take my call got to hear not only the alarm, but this very PO'd cat.
Poor Much.
A few years back when doing some heavy cooking for Thanksgiving my carbon monoxide detector went off a few times. It hasn't done that since.
 

Ms. Freya

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I feel for everyone on this thread. I thought I had the battery thing beat with our CO detector since it's a plug-in with battery backup and H is really good about chaning the battery when he checks the smoke alarms. Well, two days after he switched jobs and left at 4am, we had a major blizzard and the power went out. No big deal. happens all the time and I had the cat so wasn't feeling terribly alone or anything. Well I wake up to beeping, saw it was the CO alarm actually going off and that the power was back on. So, in my PJ's in November at 5am in the dark, I'm gathering up the cats and callin the fire department...where the nice dispatch lady looked at my address and said: "you don't happen to have a plug-in CO alarm, do you? Because our system shows that power as just restored to your area a few minutes ago and those things always go off until they're reset after a power outage." Sure enough, I hit reset and it turns off.

The bloody thing gets unplugged during outages now.
 

momofmany

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Mine usually go off during the day when I'm at work, and I come home to find the animals in a panic because of the nasty buzzing that ours makes. I don't mind the ones that chirp, but some of them scream at you when the batteries are low.

But I need to offer the public service message here, only because DH used to sell fire safety equipment and I sat thru a lot of his product demos. If you have any detector that you plug into an outlet or is hard wired, remember that most fires that start in your home are electrical. If your power goes out because of an electrical fire, your detector goes out unless it has a battery backup. Believe it or not, many of the plug in ones do not. So either replace them, or buy another one that is just battery powered.

And keep a flashlight and fire extinquisher next to your bed, and also in your kitchen close to where you cook. And plan your escape routes in case of a fire.
 
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