bleep! bleep! bleep!

[xela]

Well, I now know the new fire alarm system is loud enough to wake me up. Wake me up with a sort of oh-my-god-is-the-world-ending electric spasm of panic that I'm still feeling in my back ten minutes later.

No, the place isn't on fire.

By the time I had my pants on and had grabbed my shoes, phone, and laptop (all handy at my bedside - I was not wasting time in a fire alarm to hunt things down, just grabbing the important things in front of me), the alarm had stopped. I went through the house checking anyway, but nothing.

I can only assume the construction dust got to one of them, even though they're all covered in plastic to prevent that. (It's certainly getting to me, in spite of heavy application of antihistamines. My doctor thinks that's the reason my eye was unable to focus the other day. My dust allergy has been working overtime the past week, unsurprisingly.)

The thing that gets me is that it happened at 5:40 in the morning. I expect the dust is rather the opposite of stirred up right now. Which makes me worry that I'm in for more of the same. I heard a single alarm bleep! the other day, but it was just one, so mostly left me going where'd that come from? (Was it us? the neighbors? Not the alarm at all, but one of the construction workers' tools?) Having now heard a dozen or so more bleeps out of it, I'm sure it was the same. So am now going to try to go back to sleep while wondering when it will go off next.

Comments

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Single bleeps usually mean "battery is dead". In some models, the alarm will trip for 10-15 seconds when the battery is REALLY REALLY low. Perhaps that's what is happening?

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Is it battery operated? Could the beeping mean that you need new batteries? Hope you can get it checked over and sorted: being woken like that isn't funny.

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

I assume your system is hardwired to the electrical system, since new code is kind of anti-battery system. If that is the case, you may have an improperly wired detector. When ET was renovated, there was a wiring error (some kind of wire that was slightly stripped) that didn't show up at first, but then after things settled, it caused one of the detectors to go off multiple times. Although your contractors will probably try to convince you that it is just dust, you may want to insist that someone inspect the wiring on the units. As you say, it is not reasonable that the dust suddenly got bad at 5am.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

It's not a battery powered smoke detector. As part of the remodeling we got a new, networked, line-powered alarm system.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

No, it's line-powered.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Ug. I suppose that would be a preferable option, since I don't expect the house to be anything less than a very-high-dust-zone for the forseeable future.