Smoke Detectors! Gah!!
(What follows is a public service announcement designed to aid those who have done battle with their smoke detector in the past and were driven to madness by the incessant, unstoppable beeping that the machine makes when it goes on the fritz. It’s kind of long, so I’m going to put most of it past the jump.)
It’s 4 AM, the deadest part of the early morning. Darkness outside, darkness inside. All is silent — until the beeping starts.
*BeepBeep* [one minute of silence] *BeepBeep*
Immediately it becomes obvious that the smoke detector is emitting the noise. Battery must be out, I think. Good thing I have another 9 volt handy! So I change out the battery, and, nothing.
*BeepBeep* [one minute of silence] *BeepBeep*
Huh. Frustrating. Maybe that’s just a bad 9 volt. Let me get another one.
*BeepBeep* [one minute of silence] *BeepBeep*
Fudge. OK, let’s see what the inside of this badboy looks like…I can probably just unplug it for the night and deal with it at a more reasonable hour. Hmm…two chirps followed by two flashes of the yellow light means the unit is broken.
*BeepBeep* [one minute of silence] *BeepBeep*
Yup, two flashes of the yellow light. Unit’s shot. I guess I’ll just unplug it. Oh, I can’t unplug it: It’s wired right into the electrical system of my building. I could probably figure this out if it wasn’t 4 in the f***ing morning, but short of just cutting the wire I don’t really feel like dealing with —
*BeepBeep*
Motherf***er! Fine. I’ll just sleep through it.
4:06: Well, this is going to be annoying, but if I turn my box fan up to high maybe it’ll drown out the noi–
*BeepBeep*
4:07: Nope. That’s pretty damn loud. Well, this is going to be a pretty crappy night’s sleep.
*BeepBeep*
4:30: OK, this is ridiculous. Time to take action. There’s the speaker; perhaps I can muffle it at the source. Ah, a sock will do. And here’s the scotch tape. Let’s see if this does anything:
Sock scotch taped to alarm
*BeepBeep*
4:40: Good lord in heaven I am going to murder someone if this doesn’t stop. OK, how about if I tape a plastic container of some sort over it. I’ll stuff a t-shirt inside to absorb some of the…oh, hell, all I have is scotch tape. Scotch tape will never bear the weight of a plastic container plus a t-sh–
*BeepBeep*
4:41: GAH. Fine. Empty plastic container taped to the outside, covering the smoke detector. Well, not quite covering. It’s juuuuust a bit too small. Perfect. Well, maybe it’ll do someth–
*BeepBeep*
4:42: The plastic container, it does nothing! All right, last ditch effort here: What if I tie a t-shirt around the smoke alarm and the plastic container. Perhaps that shall wor–
*BeepBeep*
4:43: Holy hell it better work, because if it doesn’t I’m going to lose it.
The t-shirt is wrapped around a potato salad container, creating a muffler of a kind.
*BeepBeep*
4:52: Success! You can barely hear it any longer! Now I can sleep the sleep of the just, a man who has used his wiles to defeat wicked technology and maintain some semblance of sanity. Let this be a lesson to you: If you want to silence a misbehaving smoke detector, all you need is some scotch tape, a sock, a plastic container roughly seven inches in diameter, and a plain white undershirt that is big enough to encircle the circumference and tie into a knot. And it only took an hour of trial and error to jury-rig this monstrosity.