Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Adventures with Smoke Detectors

In retrospect the landlord's words of "there is no such thing as too sensitive [a smoke detector]" should have sounded ominous.

Sunday I made lamb for a celebratory "We've moved in together" dinner. Which was delicious and though expensive, has served us well for several meals now. But the smoke alarm in the kitchen went off. So I turned off the oven, opened the doors, and windows and turned on the light to see the smoke dissapate.
Except there was no smoke.

So I closed some of the doors, and turned back on the oven and was a little more watchful.... and the smoke alarm went off again. At which point I opened a door, and left it open. Because the door was open the landlord (who lives upstairs) stopped by and when I mentioned that while the lamb smelled delicious there was no smoke she said "yeah that happens, they're sensitive, but there is no such thing as too sensitive" Right?

WRONG!
Monday night at 4am I woke up to the sound of the smoke detector. I've been sleeping pretty lightly lately since its a new house, and I needed to wake Tallman up. So Tallman and I stumbled out to see what was the matter. It was the smoke detector in the spare room. I sniffed about (I have a super human sense of smell, fyi) and I smelled no smoke, no odd odors, nothing. So we went back to bed.
Ten minutes later, it happened again! Tallman didn't take the battery out of the detector, just took it off the ceiling (eye roll)... so he took the battery out and I googled "smoke detector beeping but no smoke" and found that it could be dust, bugs, or simply time to get a new smoke detector.
Or we were about to die from carbon monoxide poisoning... I have ruled this one out though since I seem to be alive still and none of the other smoke detectors have gone off (yet).

I think the plan is to buy a carbon monoxide detector, just in case, and replace the old smoke detector... maybe...

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