Murphy's Law

What I find baffling and something that has to be involved in someone's conspiracy theory is the fact that the batteries in smoke detectors ONLY GO OUT AT NIGHT. I think there is some sensor that senses the increased CO2 when you are in bed sleeping and then they beep. I've had many-a-smoke detector start beeping in the middle of the night...not to alert of some disastrous fire, but to alert you that the battery MUST be changed right away.

Last night I had been laying in bed no more than 4 1/2 minutes when the first beep sounded. Dear husband was already fast asleep as he had gone to bed earlier. He didn't stir, so I say "babe, the smoke detector just beeped". He says, "I know, I heard it". I'm thinking he was going to pretend he didn't hear it, hope it had been a bad dream, and pray that it didn't beep again. However, he got up, I turned the light on, and he gets the ottoman that's in our room to have a look at the unit.

Interestingly, it's attached to the house electricity as a back-up, so the battery is really only in case the power goes out. We've lived in our house 4 years and never changed any batteries.....did you know it recommends testing the unit WEEKLY?? Really, who does that??

Anyway, he had a hard time getting the unit back on after changing the battery...turns out there is a special compartment on the top of the unit, and you don't have to take it off the ceiling to get to the battery...things you learn after you take the unit off the ceiling. So he goes to get the step ladder from the garage, gets the unit attached to the ceiling, he puts the step ladder away, we turn the lights out.

BEEP

Lights go on, out he goes to get the step ladder, he fidgets with the unit again, tries to read the directions, puts the unit back on the ceiling, takes the step ladder back out to the garage, gets in bed. Lights out.

5 minutes later. BEEP.

Repeat above steps.

Advise hubby not to put step ladder away until morning.

Then we notice that the unit is blinking red instead of green like the rest of them in our house. It is blinking red about every 10 seconds. The directions state that if the unit blinks once a minute or 4 times that there is wrong with this or that...it says nothing about continual blinking every 10 seconds.

Uhhhh.

Enter laptop to google stupid fire detector...discover we are not the only ones with this particular unit who have had this problem. Meanwhile dear husband is still fidgeting with the unit, and thinks he has fixed the problem. He once again reattaches the unit to the ceiling.

This took 45 minutes in total.

Thankfully, there was no additional beeping in the middle of the night.

Side note: hubby bought batteries to replace the rest of the detectors in our house in order to avoid any additional night time disturbances....they aren't in yet...so there is always tonight.