Smoke alarm
 

Seems to beep randomly. It is too high for me to change batteries. Any suggestions?

To the rescue
 

If you call thr Fire Dept. they will replace your battery. No charge except the battery.

The Villages Public Safety Department: 352-205-8280
They will help with smoke detectors free of charge.

You have to supply the battery.

Yes, thank you. They tell me all the batteries need to be changed at once - which makes sense they don’t want to come out 7 times - that’s how many smoke detectors I have in the house. The thing is whatever was “chirping” just stopped after 2 hours now I am wondering what it could have been? Doesn’t the smoke detector keep “chirping” for a while?

One chirp at a time means that your battery is failing and needs to be replaced. Three chirps means that the detector is failing and needs to be replaced. If it stops chirping, it could be that the battery still has enough power to work for awhile, but it still should be replaced. One common myth is that the chirping is powered by the battery. This is not true. The house power is used for the chirping, so that, even if you remove the battery, the detector will still chirp.

Aha, I didn’t know about number of chirps definitions! So it was one chirp every 15 minutes or so. Have batteries for all detectors and I’ll get the fire department out to replace all of them.

Another happy day in The Villages for Velvet…

Uhhhhhh…. Find somebody else to change the batteries??

I buy extra batteries and give them to the fire department when they come to change mine. The extra batteries are good in case someone is missing a few batteries.

And don’t forget that a donation to the fire department for this service is much appreciated (and tax deductible).

You should read the comments before you start to type.

Some smoke detectors will carry a residual charge when you remove the battery. You should wait about 15 minutes before adding the new battery.

Are you a CPA or tax attorney? Mr Google says only donations to a volunteer fire dept are deductible. Plus even if it were deductible, you might need to subtract the value of services received. I might suggest that the value of having somebody come to your home and replace your batteries is a lot more than the cost of a few extra batteries. But IANAL

Smoke detector replacement
 

One other thought.

You can get smoke detectors (full battery or hard-wired) that contain a 10-year Lithium battery. These are especially good for high ceiling locations.

If you can't find one at local retail (Lowes or Home Depot), they're available at Amazon.

Easy 5 minute replacement too.
Doug@hangbyus.com

You can accomplish the same thing by using a lithium battery in any detector.