Competent Person

When I got home from work today (and it feels good to be able to say that) there was a loud alarm tone sounding once every minute. I have two smoke detectors: one at the top of the stairs, one at the bottom; my initial assumption was that the battery needed replacing on one of these. I found the owner's manual and set about changing the batteries - only to fail at the first hurdle when I discovered the alarm at the bottom of the stairs doesn't have a replaceable battery. It was installed free of charge by the Fire Service last autumn when they were doing house-to-house fire safety visits, and according to the sticker on the bottom, should last until 2017. I took the upstairs alarm down and removed the battery on that, only to realise that the alarm tone was still sounding every minute, and definitely coming from somewhere downstairs.

I went back down again and looked around the kitchen, wondering what other piece of kit might be responsible. The Carbon Monoxide detector, of course! It's installed almost at ceiling height and doesn't catch the eye. I found the owner's manual for that and was a little put-off to read that only a competent person should attempt to change the batteries. Not only that, you need a small Phillips head screwdriver to remove two screws in the backplate in order to access the battery. Hmmmm. It's a very loud tone - I could imagine any incompetent person smashing the device with a heavy hammer if it started beeping every minute in the early hours!

Needless to say I don't happen to have a spare 9 volt battery. However, I did manage to find an appropriately sized Phillips head screwdriver and removed the old one. What a relief.

I put the battery back in the upstairs smoke detector and pressed the reset button, and for a while that started emitting an occasional mournful chirp complaining of a low battery, but after a while it settled down again.

So there you have it. Me a member of the general workforce AND wielding a screwdriver without supervision! Is there no end to this lady's accomplishments?