Saturday, July 3, 2010

Day 3.174: False alarms


Just over a week ago, I had just finished writing a blog post, it was late and everyone else was asleep. I heard a sound we had been dreading - crumpling cellophane in the walls. It is a sign of carpenter ants hollowing out a nest in the wood structure of the house. Eventually (after a fair amount of Googling for options) I went to bed. In the morning, they were still going. Except they weren't - sometimes crumpling cellophane is just crumpling cellophane - in this case a bug trapped in a plastic bag containing something partially unwrapped from its wrapping.

Today, at the Albaniana household, enjoying the cool pool on a hot sunny day, Exile #3 (who had swum a length of the pool unassisted by flotation devices a few minutes earlier) was riding an inflatable orca when she fell off. At the deep end.  And did not come back into view. I was halfway down the pool when I saw her climbing the steps out of the water.

This evening, the smoke alarm was 'chirping' so I took it down and changed the batteries. While I was changing them it chirped again - from behind me. Not the smoke alarm then - must be the carbon monoxide alarm. I changed the back-up batteries and plugged it back on where the 'evacuate' light came on again. Even though I knew that the only significant CO risk in the house is the furnace - which is definitely not on at the moment, We still rushed around the house opening windows before finally checking the manual and confirming that the light actually means 'running on mains power'!

1 comment:

  1. Always worth checking! We have recently invested in a CO alarm ourselves, not surprisingly. Hope the rest of your weekend has been alarm-free (false or indeed otherwise).
    -BB

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