Mystery Solved

For the past week or so I've been hearing an intermittent beeping in my apartment. It's faint, so I only noticed it when everything was off, such as when I was reading or lying in bed. After a while, it finally dawned on me that it was the "chirp" of a low smoke detector battery. However, it was too low in volume to be mine. Well, one morning this week I heard a loud "chirp" and realized one of my WAS beeping. I took care of it. Since all of my detectors were installed at the same time, I put new batteries in all the others ones too. (Safety note: if your smoke detectors are 10 years old or older or you don't know how old they are, replace them immediately. There is a 50 percent failure rates for smoke detectors a decade old).

My detectors all had fresh batteries, but the chirping continued. I checked with my upstairs neighbor. He said the chirping wasn't come from his place, nor had he heard it. Next I consulted with the neighbors upstairs & across from me. Same thing. Finally I asked the last tenant in my building, my next door neighbor who's also part owner of the complex. He told me the chirping wasn't in his apartment, but that it might be coming from the basement. The BASEMENT. I hadn't thought of that. The basement is not finished. It houses the water heaters for all the apartments, and the owners use the rest of it as storage. He promptly went and checked it. BINGO. Problem solved. Thank goodness. It was driving me batty.