Smoke Detector Debacle

You know that high-pitched, ear-piercing, sanity-destroying beep that comes from a smoke detector when the battery has died? That's what my roommate and I were dealing with last week. Little did we know that one little beep would lead to a week-long odyssey to defeat the smoke detector...

Several weeks ago, I heard a few beeps. It's never happened before at this apartment. As far as I knew, the two detectors we have are hard-wired, but the beeps made me rethink that assumption. At first, I'd only hear a few beeps a day, maybe even just once, then nothing for almost a week, just long enough for me to forget about it. Then, they started up again, still sporadic but somewhat more consistent than before. On the Saturday before last, we heard them more often, and I climbed up to see what kind of battery we needed. Upon removing the cover, all I saw were a few wires leading into the ceiling...no battery in sight. Squeaks climbed up to double-check, and she couldn't see any either. That Sunday had the beeps going all day. We decided to call in maintenance.

After a night of restless sleep interrupted by periodic beeping from the smoke detector directly outside my bedroom door, I place our request for maintenance last Monday. They couldn't come until Tuesday, so we suffered another unpleasant night of torture.

On Tuesday afternoon, everything seemed to be resolved. Then, we heard it, a single beep. Then another. And another. Not again!! I immediately called our manager and told him the problem remained. He was confused because the maintenance guy had reset and tested both detectors, so everything should have been fine. It wasn't. He said he'd send them in again on Wednesday.

The manager called me on Wednesday, explaining that the head maintenance guy had spent 10 minutes in the apartment and not heard a single peep, so they didn't know what to do. What?! A WHOLE TEN MINUTES and he heard nothing?! Shock!! Of course, maintenance issues always go this way. Whatever is wrong never happens when the person who can fix it is there. After work that night, we also heard nary a single noise from either smoke detector. We told ourselves that the previous night had been an aberration, one last hurrah of beeping before the stupid thing gave in and left us alone.

We were deluding ourselves...

4:55 Thursday morning...BEEP! Off and on for the next three hours (as long as I was there before leaving for work) the beeping continued. I called the office again on my way to work and left a rambling voice mail (fueled by frustration and sleep deprivation) about the beeping and why the maintenance guy hadn't heard it the day before. When I returned home that afternoon, I heard no beeping, of course. Then, the fellow from maintenance appeared with a whole new smoke detector in a last-ditch effort to resolve our phantom issue. He said, in his two visits to our apartment last week (the first and last, his supervisor came in between), he had never heard a sound, but he did believe we were hearing it (I assume...he was nice to me, anyway).

He replaced the unit, and we haven't had a beep since. Thank God! One more night of sleep interrupted by that noise, and I just might have murdered someone. The maintenance worker did inform me how to disconnect the detector if necessary in the future, so we're covered, just in case.

There you have it, the great Smoke Detector Debacle! It was a draining week, but we survived with our sanity (mostly) in-tact. Of course, now our management and maintenance teams think we're crazy and hearing sounds that don't exist, but that's what happens sometimes.