The Anonymous Widower

Are Smoke Detectors Worth It?

For the last three days, I’ve been living with the constant beep of a smoke detector every few seconds.

I thought, I only had three smoke detectors; one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom and one in the boiler room.  I check them regularly and know the beep when they need a new battery. Not that that would have helped, as I have none of the standby batteries needed, as if I do need one, I just get one from the 25 hour a day convenience store round the corner.

The builders, who put in my false ceiling in the hall, made provision for another, as this picture shows.

Provision For A Smoke Detector

But fourteen months after they started, it’s still not finished.

I eventually traced the noise to the smoke detector intended for that ceiling, which some helpful soul had placed in the downstairs bedroom.

The Errant Detector

As I couldn’t be bothered to silence it correctly, I stuffed it under some coats in a drawer.

If I hear it again it goes in a bucket of water! What noise does a drowning smoke detector make?

So how many smoke detectors end up being silenced or removed, because they annoy the house owner or tenant. Incidentally, when I moved in this house, all were beeping like an orchestra of mice.  But that’s tenants for you and after having them for ten years this house wasn’t happy.

Smoke detectors as they are designed now are a nightmare. I’m not against them, but they should be independent of any form of changeable battery. I do wonder how many people end up in hospital, trying to put a battery in a smoke detector.

A Chief Fire Officer for Ipswich once told me, that they put smoke detectors in all the Council’s housing stock.  But within six months none worked, as the kids had had the batteries for their toys and games machines.

December 25, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | World | Design, My House