Two nights ago, Your Survival Guy and family were awoken in the middle of the night by the blare of our smoke detectors telling us to evacuate. As you know from here, we’re at our cabin in New Hampshire. Barely able to think through the noise, I jumped out of bed and did exactly what you’re not supposed to do and ran downstairs to make sure there wasn’t a fire.
There wasn’t.
Running back upstairs with the news we gathered the animals and went outside. Our smoke detectors are hardwired but not through a service, so thankfully, the fire department wasn’t en route. When I was a kid, and dinner got a little smokey, the smoke detector would go off, and you just flapped a towel at it until it stopped. But this was different. No smoke. No carbon monoxide.
In April, when we were up here, I noticed one of the smoke detectors was buzzing. I called my guy, who had it looked at, who said they all needed to be replaced because they were over 10 years old. They were replaced. But why did they go off? In my experience, smoke detectors thrive in the hours between 1:30 am and 3:30 am. I don’t know why they just do.
Golfing yesterday and approaching the 14th tee, I said, “See that truck over there in that driveway? That’s the electric company that is supposed to come look at our smoke detectors, let’s go talk to them.” Turns out, he could come over to the house in an hour, so we cut our round short, which was fine based on how poorly we were playing.
I never knew there were so many ways a smoke alarm could be faulty or create a false alarm. As the guys were working, climbing without a ladder up to a 15-foot-high smoke detector, I asked if they’d seen the documentary Free Solo.
One of them said they’ve been having all kinds of problems with new smoke detectors going off for no reason. “It’s been happening at my house for the past month,” he said.
“Month?” I asked.
Minutes later, they replaced the faulty smoke detector and installed and tested a new one. “Hopefully this won’t go off tonight,” he said.
Yes, older smokes should probably be replaced. Just don’t call me in the middle of the night.
