[TriLUG] [OT] Strange Beep from Back-UPS XS 1200

[Peter Neilson]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2014 09:59:35 -0500, Scott Chilcote <scottchilcote at att.net>  
wrote:

> The next thing we have to solve are smoke alarms that go "Eeeep" for one
> second every ten minutes when their batteries start to fail.  Whoever
> invented that signal was a sadist.  Our house came with five of them.

The recommended solution is to replace ALL the smoke-detector batteries  
annually, and the suggested day is when you switch your clocks from  
daylight time to standard time. This method will work until we all have  
clocks that adjust automatically. It fails already, of course, in Arizona.

Just in case someone out there is thinking, "I don't need to worry about  
fire. We don't have little children playing with matches, and we don't  
smoke," let me relate a story.

The clothes dryer in our new house started to fail erratically. I  
initially assumed the problem might be with the dryer's internal cut-off  
switches, and replaced them all. The difficulty continued. I inspected  
every single part of that dryer, and "didn't leave no part untouched," as  
Arlo Guthrie told us. Then, knowing I'd find nothing, I looked at the only  
spot left--the heavy-duty wall outlet for the dryer. Bingo! It was wired  
incorrectly.

There are two kinds of connectors for outlets. The traditional kind, going  
back to Tom Edison, has the household wires fastened under screws. The new  
kind, designed to speed construction, has little holes into which you push  
the bare end of the wire. They grab the wire and make an electrical  
connection that is supposedly secure. Must be, or the UL would not have  
approved it.

So what had happened? The person wiring the house, probably NOT a licensed  
electrician, treated a "tighten the screw" outlet as if it were a "push in  
the wire" variety. The wires were not tightly fastened, and were sometimes  
connected, sometimes disconnected and (presumably) sometimes arcing. We  
could have gone up in flames. [Shudder]

Hmmm. I didn't change those batteries back in November. Four new nine-volt  
batteries go onto my shopping list.