Saturday morning at 10am we heard a high pitched beeping. Jake tracked the sound to our office and started trying to reset the smoke detector. A few seconds later all the smoke detectors started going off. It was LOUD!!!
Neither of us were dressed so we threw on clothes, grabbed the baby, our purse/wallets, and our wedding rings and headed out the door. Our neighbors were also filing out of their front doors. No one knew what was going on - there was no smoke/fire/obvious issue. So one of our neighbors called maintenance. They guy came over and after 30 min or so was able to override the system and turn it off. I had a nice time chatting with my new neighbors and getting to know them (I think we might be the only white people in our complex).
We went back inside (we were melting out there - it's been in the 90s this week - so sticky!). As we started to eat breakfast we heard beeping from upstairs. Jake went up and sure enough the office was still yelling at us. So we had the maintenance guy come back to take a look at our smoke detector. He was stumped. Since it is hard wired you can't just take the battery out (that was his first suggestion to us... classic). He was on the phone with some other guys trying to figure it out. He would walk outside and fiddle with the box, but nothing helped. Finally he shut down the entire building's smoke detector system, but the beeping didn't stop!?!?!?! Finally he and Jake were able to track the sound to one of our boxes. Inside was a carbon monoxide detector with a dying 9V battery.
We apologized for making him come over on a Saturday and sent him off with a Diet Dr. Pepper. He said not to worry - that he didn't have anything to do, he lives in the complex, and he gets double overtime on Saturdays.
After he left, Jake told me that he realized that when the carbon monoxide sensor originally went off and he was fiddling with the smoke detector in our office - he must have triggered the system for the whole building! Oops!!!!! Let's keep this as our little secret!
For two engineers, we sure have issues with smoke detectors!
2 comments:
Our detectors talk to each other also, so much so your Dad took them off the ceiling made sure they had new batterys in them and they are up on bookcases now instead of hard wired. Hope you can find a house soon. Love Grandma
I linked over to your other smoke detector story and all I can say is, next time you hear that beeping, go find a 9V battery and leave the rest of the systems alone!
This post had me laughing. There's got to be a better way to meet your neighbors. Maybe you should make some legitimate smoke and host a BBQ for everyone.
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