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Citizen complaint of the day: The piercing beeping that doesn't stop
By adamg on Fri, 10/30/2015 - 8:17am
A sleepless citizen files a complaint from Cornell and Kittredge streets in Roslindale:
Awful piercing loud beeping noise outside every 10-15 seconds near intersection of Cornell and kittredge, for two days now, round the clock- what is it and who can shut it off?? Its maddening.
Ed. question: Could it be a smoke detector going off at the house that caught fire at Kittredge and Glendower a couple nights ago?
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Comments
its possible....
When gutting my house recently someone accidentally threw away a smoke alarm with a battery in it. We didn't know until it was too late. It was at the bottom of the very large, very full dumpster that was sitting in my driveway. It went off almost constantly whenever the wind blew.
PSA
If you do hear what you think is a neighbor's smoke alarm going off, be a good neighbor & call the fire department. I had a faulty alarm that went off while I was at work one day & was grateful that a neighbor called the FD. They broke in (no damage), checked things out & disabled the alarm. I'm so glad my neighbor didn't just ignore the noise!
Chelsealand
Unfortunately, smoke alarms going off are a norm in my 'hood. Between ones actually going off, and ones where it's a battery dying in them.. you just learn to ignore them
Not that I am bad neighbor.. but I'd be here all day calling 911 every time I heard one go off or beep.
Fair enough
Fair enough. I don't think you're a bad neighbor. :^)
?
You are the only one who would want someone to break into your house.
Really?
I'd rather have my house broken into by the FD (who locked up after themselves) than come home to a burned down house. Maybe that's just me.
Disabled The Alarm Instead Of Replacing The Battery?!!
Yeah
The alarm itself was FUBAR. The FD took it down & took out the battery; when we replaced the battery the alarm continued its shrieking. It was a good opportunity to upgrade that alarm and a couple of other older ones.
I learned the lesson about smoke alarms
going bad the hard way. They went off early one evening when I wasn't home. Neighbor (I live in a condex) called the FD. Fortunately, by looking in the windows and cellar sliding doors, the FD were able to figure out the house wasn't on fire, so they didn't smash in the door.
PSA - It is recommended that smoke detectors be replaced once every ten years. At the time of this incident, the ones in my house were twenty-three years old.
Not at all untypical
Ionization-type smoke and CO detectors (ie the least expensive, most common kind) *do* go bad - they use a radioactive source (Americium241) and after a decade or so about 1% of its mass has decayed to Neptunium, and the unit doesn't work reliably anymore.
(Btw folks - that Americium, even though it's present in crazy small amounts, is actually more toxic than it's neighbor on the periodic table - Plutonium. Sleep well!)
A bit off topic ...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Radioactive-Boy-Scout-Backyard/dp/037550351X
I highly recommend this book
even if you have little or no interest in atomic power. It's an interesting read, and a little bit scary as well.
My own personal experience
My own personal experience with a constant piercing beep was with a carbon monoxide detector. It would do that when the batteries were low. Drove me nuts they to figure out what it was.
It was doing its job then
You're supposed to be driven so buggy by the beeping that you replace the batteries or the whole unit.
My CO detector kept going off
My CO detector kept going off (the full alarm, not the low battery chirp), even after I changed the battery, and even though it also plugged into an outlet. So I unplugged it and took out the battery.
Now I see you're supposed to throw away all of your smoke detectors every 10 years. That's ridiculous. I don't replace anything that often. Are smoke detectors really that unreliable? Or did manufacturers manufacture themselves some extra business by getting the national code to include that clause for no reason?
Planned obsolescence
We had TWO carbon monoxide detectors go off in the middle of the night at the same time. It was in summer with the windows wide open and no autos or anything else operating anywhere nearby, so we figured it had to be a false alarm. The batteries were relatively new, and the detectors continued to sound loudly after new batteries were installed. So we left the batteries out until the next morning. The next day we found the manual for that particular model, which said that the detectors had a planned seven-year lifespan. Seven years after the first battery installation, the detector would sound permanently, as long as it had viable batteries in it. The idea was at that point, you are supposed to remove the batteries and discard the detector, and replace it with a new one.
Both detectors had been originally activated and installed at the same time, and they went off within seconds of each other, about 7 years and 2 months after they went up.
The biggest problem is that it's impossible to find new detectors with the same form factor, so you now have to drill new holes in your walls, and there will be a spot where the paint doesn't match (since they didn't paint under the detectors that now have to be removed).
It wasn't mine. It was in an
It wasn't mine. It was in an apartment complex and actually quite far away from my unit and in the hall around a corner. It was just that at night with everything so quiet I could hear it. Truly drove me nuts figuring out what it was.