Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 29, 2024

Replace the battery?

Ours goes off randomly at 3AM. When I get tired of it, I throw it away, and don’t get another until the fire dept guilts me into buying another one and starting over again.

I’m with the kid on this one, that is a very unpleasant chirp. Something akin to a 300 kilo finch.

This happened to me recently, it was the worst.

The low battery beep has to wake you from a sound sleep. It’s in the unwritten specifications.

The one in my bedroom is 10 feet up a slanted roof. It went off at 8PM.. I tried to sleep on the couch at the other end of the house. Next morning my Son in law came and we took it down. There is another one RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR! And why was it put so far up there? Arrrggghhh.

What I hate is when there’s more than one smoke detector and you’re trying to pin point the one that’s beeping.

.

And always at 2am

Note to people with newer wired alarms. We have three of each.

Less important to change battery regularly since most now have long shelf lives; BUT THE UNITS DO NOT. There’s a radioactive chip which is part of the detection process. THEY have a 10-15 year life from the manufacture date … not your purchase date. The whole unit needs to be replaced before THAT signal goes off. I learned that after not being able to turn the warning off from 2 am until we finally call the fire department at 5:00.

Which reminds me: it is time to change the batteries in mine.

This exact thing happened to me once…AT 2 IN THE MORNING!

Things that go beep in the night.

Or buy the newer smoke alarms that come with 10 year batteries.

Ceiling fan switches beep? My older ones don’t; since when and why?

Would it kill the smoke detector manufactures to put a little light on the thing to identify the one that’s got a low battery so you can tell which one it is that’s chirping every few minutes? That hunt through the house to find out which one wants a battery is really maddening. (And no, I am not doing the game of replacing the batteries twice a year. They last far longer than that, so that’s just wasteful.)

My parents have a very high ceiling so the dratted things are very, very high. Anytime it beeped you had to drag a very tall ladder and a broom handle to hit the mute button. Changing the batteries was a nightmare and needed a tall person. My mom, in a fit of rage, used a telescopic broom handle to hit the poor beeping thing till death occured and threatened all her children with the same fate if we dared replace it.

Ours is strangely placed. It’s located 5 feet out from a balcony above an open stair well, so can’t be reached that way. Hasn’t chirped in a decade, so guess it’s gone toes up. Considering the height, it’s gonna stay there until it makes up its mind.

But how will I know when dinners is done?

The low-battery chirp is to ensure that you don’t get peace and quiet while your house is burning down around you.

When the smoke detector screams… the food on the stove is done.

And that low-battery loud noise always seems to happen at 2am. HOW does that machine know that it’s night? Every Single. Time.

I’ve been swapping mine out for the sealed-battery, lasts-10-years ones, and just for the record: I’ve been replacing them after about 2 years……

My brain doesn’t like beeper sounds, I researched and paid a bit more to get a microwave that you can turn off the beeper. So much more pleasant now. Strangely enough chirping birds don’t bother me.

You could use stronger language – but it might be beeped out.

Create an app that sends an alert to your phone. Nobody home when it starts going off drives a dog bonkers.

Can you have the daylights scared out of you at night?

What’s the kid talking about? A smoke detector going off is very different from a low-battery sound.

Living in an apartment building, I hear fire alarms a lot more frequently than I would in a house. And they are definitely designed not to be slept through.

It’s supposed to scare the daylights out of you! What about people who suffer from PTSD?? Why I’m so careful avoiding mishaps like that.

Now mobility scooters beep when backing up. Other vehicles that have a backup warning have switched to a different sound difficult to describe.. like a duck call with a sore throat. It’s loud but not eardrum piercing.

Today’s strip is a welcome change of pace from its customary snide oneupsmanship.

But the flip side: ours was a duel fire/carbon monoxide detector. Twenty years old and it didn’t beep (although its little light saying it was on was still going) while the house filled up with CO. We were having problems with the furnace and called an HVAC guy to inspect it and he came at a run exclaiming, Are you guys okay??! Actually, no we weren’t; we had a thankfully not too high level of CO poisoning. Five minutes after he disconnected that furnace the idiot detector suddenly came to life and started beep-screaming. Moral of the story: replace them every ten years, without fail, we were told. Those annoying beepers are for saving your one precious life.

Also why does it always start chirping at 4 AM?