top of page
Writer's pictureAnn Crowe

Real Life Stories from my Nest - It's Alarming

Updated: Dec 11, 2018


It's been a while since I've shared something that has nothing to do with my grad school work. I figured I needed some great story to go along with the fish down the drain story and saving my neighbors from aliens. This one happened a couple of weeks ago. All 9V batteries in smoke detectors are of the devil and know to run out of juice in the wee hours of the morning. True to form, just after 4:30 am one glorious weekday morning, we awake to "beep." UGH! By the time I am up and looking for batteries, my husband figures out it is the same detector he changed the battery on a week ago (apparently that battery did not get the memo about waking people up and beeped in the afternoon while he was home). He struggled a week ago to get the beeping to stop and even thought the brand new package of batteries might have been bad (really??), but didn't say a word about any of this until about 5 am of this particular morning.

When removing and replacing the battery doesn't work, we begin to scour the interwebs for information on smoke detectors. We picked up a few tricks and finally got the detector to stop beeping. It's now after 6 am and it's time for everyone to wake up, so we all go about our business getting ready for school and work.


Boring. Seriously, was that even blog worthy? Here's the good part. The kids and I get home about 5pm that afternoon/evening and walk in the house to "beep." Are you kidding me?? I drag the ladder that I am not ever sure how to use back into the house from the garage and I try all the tricks from the morning. Nothing works. I turn off the breaker. The beeps continue. I unwire the detector from the ceiling. "Beep." How on earth? Now I am dragging the ladder to every other detector wondering if I have lost my marbles and if it's a different detector. Make it stop! I just can't figure it out. I'm now standing in the middle of the house, studying all the ceiling space for any detector that I may have missed. I'm ready to load the kids back in the car and go have a pizza while the house beeps all alone.


Our AC tried really hard to be replaced for about three years. Living in TX, that doesn't make for pleasant summers. We nursed it along, but finally, in the summer of 2017, our wallet was dealt a huge blow as the AC was finally successful in its endeavor to be replaced. I'm aware at this point I have not finished the previous story and this one seems to have from no where. This will all come together soon, I promise. One of the final steps after installing a new AC is a city inspection. With the inspection comes the requirement to install a carbon monoxide detector that just so happens to be battery operated and hanging on the wall about 5 feed down the wall from the smoke detector that is in my hand since, since as we know, I unwired if from the ceiling. See where I am going? I felt ridiculous.



I changed the battery in the (edited adjective) carbon monoxide detector, rewired the smoke detector, flipped the breaker back on, put the ladder back in the garage, and we've been gloriously beep free for several weeks now. I'm pretty sure we finished up our evening with leftovers and homework. Now that I am writing this, I'm pretty sure we're due for some pizza. I know what's for dinner tomorrow.




2 views0 comments

Kommentare


bottom of page