My first conscious thought was, "I thought the alarm was powered by electricity. It can't be the alarm". The second thought I thought was, "I'll tend to it in the morning". No amount of ignoring the chirp worked. It was relentless.
This is when it is pretty handy to have a second adult with good hearing in the house. The past few middle-of-the-night-dead-battery alerts happened while I was still living with my daughter. She is taller than me and deals with the technical issues required to dismount, dismantle, open battery compartments, re-mantle and re-mount the offending alarms with ease.
I was on my own. I armored up and prepared for the challenge.
I found a new battery, pulled a chair under the alarm and waited for the chirp to confirm I was where I needed to be. I wasn't.
The chirp was in the distance. So I stood at the top of the basement stairs and waited for the next chirp. I was colder than I was before. What is it about the acoustics of a chirping fire alarm that makes the task of hunting it down so hard? I went back upstairs to discover I have a battery operated fire alarm right outside my bedroom door. No part of my conscious memory was aware of its presence.
Thankfully, removing it from the ceiling was as simple as it should be. Looking up and trying to figure out how to dismount the electrical alarm on the main floor was incredibly hard on my neck. I was grateful for the lower ceiling height and ease of removal. My neck barely noticed the brief upward glance.
Then came replacing the battery. There were instructions. Very small instructions. Embossed writing of the same color as the plastic. In the middle of the night. Thankfully, the words "Battery Compartment" stood out and I was thrilled to discover I didn't have to dismantle the alarm.
One quick fingernail-under-the-compartment-door and I was in. Battery was simple to remove. It wasn't one of those snap-on 9 volt battery connections. I simply had to align positive with positive and I was ready to proceed.
I barely installed the new battery when, "Chirp!". What?!? Hmmm. I couldn't close the compartment door due to a small movable plastic piece sticking straight up preventing closure and ensuring the user didn't make the mistake of ignoring it.
Battery out; plastic swivel part pushed down; battery back in (keeping small plastic piece down); the compartment door closed. Voila!
But a red light continued to flash. Oh no!! I found a back-up battery to replace what must have been a dead new battery. Before proceeding, I read the microscopic instructions. "Red light will flash every 10 seconds if alarm is not functioning"; "Red light will flash every 40 seconds when functioning properly".
I was 40 seconds away from confirmed success. I listened to the ticking clock in the background of the scene for 40 seconds. Flash!
Mission accomplished.
In the short span of an hour, all was right in the world again and silence prevailed.
My question is: WHY do fire alarm batteries go dead in the middle of the night? Always the middle of the night.
My answer is: BECAUSE you didn't change the battery on a regularly scheduled date. I'll bet somewhere in the small instructions I didn't read in full, it probably states "Change batteries every six months". I just looked that up. I would have guessed every year.
The punishment for my crime was a middle of the night wake-up call.
As I toiled through this task, the episode of the show "This is Us", where the camera pans to their open smoke alarm door, with batteries on their list, was prevalent in my mind. They forgot to buy batteries. The ramifications of this was waking up in the middle of the night to a house fire that was out of control.
I'm grateful it was simply a chirping battery that disrupted my sleep.
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