From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Sep 06 2002 - 12:21:52 MDT
Brian D Williams wrote:
>>...
>>
>
>
>>Last night one of my smoke detector batteries ran low
>>and the infernal device started chirping. It occurred to me
>>that these blasted contraptions introduce more risk than they
>>alleviate. Reasoning: one must get up on a ladder to change
>>the damn battery, usually while groggy from interrupted sleep,
>>not to mention being extremely pissed, and this causes the
>>unfortunate prole to risk falling off and breaking major limbs.
>>This risk is elevated if said prole is drunk, clumsy, elderly, or
>>stupid. Fortunately I am none of the above (by most people's
>>estimate) but still.
>>
>>
>
>Don't wait for it to run out.
>
>For a number of years now various organizations have been
>advocating changing the battery twice a year, on the days we use
>for changing to/from daylight savings time. For those who live
>where this is not practiced, choose two other dates.
>...
>
>
They are still a poor design. Cooking smoke will frequently send them
into hysterics, and the easy way of shutting them off is to remove the
battery, which defeats the purpose. A well designed smoke alarm would
have a "disable for 15 minutes" button. Also, there would be variants
that used rechargeable batteries, and plugged into the power mains, so
that they would always be charged, and no battery changes would be
needed. But I haven't been able to find any with either feature.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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