The Freaking Bleeping Smoke Detector

I'll start off by saying that smoke detectors save lives, everyone should have them, the batteries (if they have them) should be changed regularly, and they should never be disconnected.

But, what if.....?

When we did a major addition to our house, starting 15+ years ago, and we ain't done yet, we had to put wired in smoke detectors in the new part.  At the south end of the house we added a ground level family room and a single car garage next to it.  There is a gas fireplace in the family room, that is on non stop from the cool weather of Fall, until we get some warm weather in the Spring.  That and the wood stove are the only heat in the house. The family room ceiling is vaulted and the stairs go up from there to the dining area on top of the garage.  There is a rail along the 8' opening in the dining room, and it is open to the family room below.  To pass the building inspection of the new addition, we had to put a smoke detector on each level.  The smoke detectors have to be wired to a house circuit, and to a circuit that it has a lot of things on it that are used regularly.  That means that you can't turn the breaker off for the smoke detector without it affecting other things that you need on a regular basis, like lights and electrical outlets.

The smoke detector in the dining room became an issue right away. It was located on the slightly peaked ceiling  just out of sight looking from the kitchen.  Just about every time we made toast, that smoke detector went off, and it was most annoying.   When we climbed up to check it, within the workings of the smoke detector itself, there was a little plug thing.  It got unplugged, and has remained unplugged ever since.

Last night I had planned on going to bed early.  I spend too many late nights on the computer, which is in the family room.  Anytime before midnight would be early.  After posting my 365 photo, I got sidetracked into looking at wood furniture  (we are looking for a couple of night tables).  About 11:30 I'm heading to bed, still early for me.  The smoke detector in the family room went off briefly.  I did recall that before when we've had really cold overnight temperatures we've had issues with it.  Thought nothing more of it and went to bed.  At 12:30 I'm woken by the smoke detector beeping, which is at the other end of the house.  I ignore it, it stops. I try to get back to sleep.  It starts again. Repeat the previous three sentences ten times or so.  Jake has come into the bedroom. Jake HATES/FEARS the smoke detector.  I hear him rustle every time it starts beeping again.  Finally I stagger out of bed, walk through the dark house to the family room.  First I turn the gas fire down, and then instead decided to turn the ceiling fan on.  It is set on low.  I go back to bed.  All is quiet.  All is good.  I try to fall back to sleep.

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

It goes off quickly.  I fall into some weird dream.  It bleeps again.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  I wonder how the bleeping man can sleep through all this bleeping bleeping.  I get out of bed, stagger a bit, and I am a little confused. It takes me a few seconds to figure out how to get out of the bedroom.  We changed the bed around and this is only the second night in the new spot, so now instead of having to walk around two sides of the bed to get to the door, I have to walk around three.  I am next to the window though (bonus!). It's now about 2:30am.

This time I turn the gas fire down very low.  I figure I'd rather be cold when I got up after a decent night's sleep (or what's left of it), than not get any sleep at all. Repeat the above paragraph, minus the finding my way  to the door. It's now 4am.  The bleeping man is still sleeping. This time I had to find a chair to stand on to pull the chain on the fan to get it run on high speed. 

Stagger back to bed.  All is quiet.  Then it starts all over again.  4:30 am.  This time (Hooray!) bleeping man wakes up with a start, likely wondering if the house is on fire. (I do seem to have a thing for not wanting to wake people up that are still managing to sleep).  Obviously I can't count on him to wake up when the smoke detector goes off, the first time.  I recount my story in the self pitying, suffering way women can.  He gets up to see what he can do.  Then I hear David thumping up the stairs.  His room is next to the family room.  I wonder if it has actually taken him this long to hear it.  Yay for men who (finally) react in an emergency.  I hear a call for the ladder, and Larry says it is out in the barn.  I shout that it is outside the bedroom door, where he put it when we were working on the closet.  We've only been walking past it for too many days.  David goes up the ladder, can't find anything to disconnect, so they all go back to bed.  Silence for a while.  Then it starts again.  I said that there is a plug thing in the dining room one, there must be a plug in the family room detector.  Surely we bought them at the same time from the same place.  Seems like we didn't.  He still couldn't find anything to disconnect, but he did manage to break one of the tabs on the cover, so now that the cover stayed off, we got silence and it stayed silent.  Well until I got up before 8, turned the fan off that was blowing cold air around the family room, went down and sat at the computer, and the smoke detector started beeping.  So here I am with a blanket wrapped around me.  Jake says the only safe place in the house is the bedroom.

Update:  Yes the smoke detectors are the same.  After balancing at the top of the step ladder in the middle of the family room, and then on the dining room table upstairs, I realized that you don't take the top off off the smoke detector.  What you do is grab the top, and unscrew it and the base from the ring that is attached to the ceiling.  The plug is behind that.  It is unplugged, and the stepladder will remain in the middle of the family room to remind us to plug it back in when this cold snap is over.  All I can figure is that the gas fire is burning more vigorously because it's so cold, and something is setting of the smoke detector.  It's not a carbon monoxide detector, so it's not that.
Oh yeah, the bleepingness of the husband may have been exaggerated in the telling of this story:)
We had to coax Jake out of the bedroom this morning.