Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Early Morning Alarm

Early this am I was awakened to a very high pitched alarm.  I sat up in bed, trying to determine where the sound was coming from.  Of course, both my furballs were up and panting....knowing something was not right.  We made our way into the living room and I found it was the propane detector.  So, here I am, down on my hands and knees with a flashlight in one hand and two crazy furballs...one on each side...panting away and trying to be as close to me as they can possibly get.  Where is Billy, you might ask?  Billy is sleeping peacefully in the bedroom.  Yeah....he doesn't hear a thing...it is just me and the dogs.  I finally found the reset button and got the thing to shut off.  Now, I'm trying to figure out....why.  Back in the bedroom I go...with my entourage of furballs.  I wake Billy and inform him of the situation...his response...."Is the furnace on?".... Me, "Is the furnace on?  We have been running the ac for the past 3 days.  No dear, the furnace is not on".  Billy, "the batteries probably need to be changed".  Me, "No dear, the detector is hard wired".  Billy, "OK".  End of conversation....alright, I'll just wait and see if it goes off again....it did.  Me and the dogs are down on the floor once again.  This time I have a screwdriver in hand.....I removed the face plate and pulled out the wires.  At this point, Billy appears...I think he must have opened his eyes long enough to see me with a screwdriver...scary stuff! We decide to cut the wires.  I then made Billy get out the little hand held propane detector that he uses when he refills and replaces our tanks.  We check out the fiver and it did not detect any propane anywhere.  So, we are both guessing that the hard wired detector is now defective.....another item for our repair list.  All is well and back to bed we go......of course, my furballs are not convinced.  Cosmo, who sleeps with us, continued to stand watch over me.....panting away, hot doggie breath on my face.......while Billy peacefully drifts back off to dreamland!  Life is good....right?

7 comments:

  1. A false alarm is better than the real thing, but still scary especially in the middle of the night. My better half would have never allowed me to sleep thru that.

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  2. all in the life of an RVer!..hope you got back to sleep finally!

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  3. Been there and done that... My honey says it could be a low battery. Check it out just in case... dogs are a funny lot. Mine if a nervous nellie too!
    Have fun & Travel safe
    Donna

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  4. Ours went off about a month ago. Scared me to death but I immediately woke Jim up. No messing around here. I could just picture you trying to check things out with the fur babies in a panic trying to help you. Hope they can figure out what's wrong with it.

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  5. Glad you had another tester to double-check. Propane alarms are nothing to ignore. Hope you get it fixed without any trouble.

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  6. We ordered a new propane detector and it should arrive today....should be an easy install just a couple of wires.

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  7. HINT: If (when) the detector goes off again, just pull its fuse in your main electric panel. This will save you from having to unscrew the plate and cut any wires until you have to! We often pull our detector fuse when boondocking to conserve power. One of those hand-held leak sniffers sounds like a handy tool to have!

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