It is 2 a.m., and the household is blissfully and restfully asleep.
Suddenly, filtered though the haze of sleep and dreams, comes a familiar and unwelcome whisper:
Chirp.
Maybe it’s just imagination; wait a few moments. And then:
Chirp!
When a third chirp follows, all grounds for denial evaporate: These are the dreaded overnight announcements that the batteries in a smoke alarm have expired.
As usual, the warnings, insistent and annoying, have erupted in the dead of night.
According to experts, this is not coincidence. One source explains that in the wee hours when it’s cooler, battery output can drop. That’s why old batteries tend to fail between 2 and 6 a.m. when most houses are coolest.
This morsel of science is small consolation for what must happen next, a confusing search for which detector is the culprit – especially in a big house like ours where five of these things abide from cellar to second floor.
A look at the clock, though, tempts one to turn over with a vow of finding and fixing the offender in the morning.
But such a delay cannot be, and here is why:
“Smoke detector battery warnings are designed to be annoying to ensure they are addressed promptly, prioritizing fire safety over user comfort, we are told by Artificial Intelligence.
“The chirping sound is intentionally high-pitched and intermittent to grab attention and prevent people from ignoring the low battery signal. While inconvenient, the goal is to motivate homeowners to replace the battery quickly and maintain a functioning smoke detector.”
Just how vexing is this sound?
Social media provides some pungent answers.
Says one homeowner: “Chirping should stop if you change the battery – if not, a baseball bat works great.”
This advice apparently appealed to someone else, who replied, “I had a smoke detector that needed new batteries. Now I have a hole in my ceiling.”
Another said that changing the batteries after sleepily climbing a ladder to the ceiling is simply swapping fire danger for another way of risking life and limb.
One columnist wrote that the story of smoke alarms is “searching in the junk drawer for a nine-volt battery in the middle of the night to stop the chirping. Getting the extension ladder out of the garage, dressed in your pajamas.Touching the wrong button and setting off a full-blown screaming fire alarm.”
Naturally, another favorite time for smoke alarm hi-jinx is when dinner is nearly ready. One woman observed that there’s riches to be made by the inventor of a smoke alarm that will turn off when one shouts, “I’m just cooking!”
But enough of this alarm-bashing. I haven’t heard of any deaths from battery changing, while the U.S, Product Safety Commission says about 2,000 Americans a year die in residential house fires – two-thirds of them in homes without functioning smoke alarms.
So I’m grateful for these potentially life-saving devices. On the other hand, slumbrous experience leads me to stand by my contention that this irksome nocturnal chirping is strictly for the birds.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
