Changing a smoke detector battery before the next beep startles me so much I fall off the ladder is as close as I get to defusing bombs.

@mattblaze

Spent ~2 years working "bomb disposal" 24x7 and the trick was to get the new diaper on before the kid pooped again...

@mattblaze I never got the whole "defusing bombs" thing. The detonator is right there, sticking out of the semtex. Simply remove it. It doesn't matter what sort of weird electronics are involved, just remove the detonator. Why make it hard?

@mattblaze Visited my parents for Thanksgiving, and in their single-story two-bedroom they have four smoke detectors -- all of which decided to start beeping overnight Thanksgiving morning. And they don't all use the same kind of batteries or have the same battery holder. (Some are 9-volt, some 2xAA. And of course once you get the latter sort open, good luck figuring out the correct polarity because it's marked in injection-molded white text on white ABS.)

@mattblaze One of my favorite games of all time is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

https://keeptalkinggame.com/

It’s great - one person can “see” the bomb, the other has the “defusal manual”. The one with the bomb can’t see the manual, the one with the manual can’t see the bomb.

They have to work together and communicate well to get it done before the bomb. 5 minutes on the clock.

@mattblaze The recommendation is to change them twice a year when we adjust our clocks, but I chose long ago to do it on NYE and the Fourth of July for the following reasons:

1) The dates are more memorable,

2) I'm more likely to have help,

3) Batteries are sale-priced, and

4) The task is far more enjoyable with a cocktail

@mattblaze I recently replaced my end-of-lifespan (10 yrs) smoke detectors with new ones that claim their battery lasts 10 years.
(IIRC, there's a speck of radioactive material in them, whose decay determines the detector's lifespan)

@PeterLudemann @mattblaze this is the way. Never change another battery. Just change the detector, which you need to change once a decade anyway.

@mweiss @mattblaze Where I live, of you do any renovations that require a building inspector, you have to install wired smoke detectors. (I presume they have some kind of battery to backup for power outages - the last one at our house was 5 days) (Also, we got a building inspector who didn't mind not noticing what kind of smoke detectors we have, because installing wired smoke detectors would have required major rewiring)

@mattblaze lol

@mattblaze @SRDas

Yes I need a smoke alarm. I do have co2 … I haven’t heard a smoke alarm in awhile .

@steve there is an explanation for that.... The voltage of batteries is temperature dependent. The house is normally warmer during the day. So the voltage of the smoke alarm battery is just above the trigger limit. At night the battery cools down a few degrees, the voltage drops a little, just under the trigger... Beep. Mostly around 3 or 4 am