› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Neighbour noise › Smoke detectors – beeping every 30 seconds flat battery warning › Current Page
I doubt anyone is sitting in their apartment enjoying the sound of a battery warning from their smoke alarm every 30 seconds, so making a noise complaint to council or the OC is overkill and probably ineffectual. You really just want the noise to stop and a personal request is probably enough for that. Your problem is finding someone to ask.
Firstly, look at your own smoke alarm. Depending on the age of your building if yours is hardwired its likely that they all are in your building and you can assume the source of the noise is elsewhere.
Have you asked around your neighbours (above and below you as well as next door)? If its driving you nuts its probably annoying someone else too. They might help narrow down the direction its coming from. If you don’t know your neighbours this is your chance to meet them. Take a spare battery and make a joke of it. And if it turns out that one of them is deaf and the beeping noise gets louder when they open their door to you….problem solved!
However its more likely that its in a unit that is currently unoccupied (or possibly occupied by someone physically unable to remove or change the battery). Which gives you another clue to track down which apartment it is, but is likely to mean there is no one there to ask. If that is the case, you will have a different problem to solve and you will have to hope that their neighbours, or the building manager, if there is one, might have a key or know some way to contact the owner or tenant to arrange a battery replacement.
The easiest outcome for you is if the resident is there but hasn’t changed the battery because they are physically unable to – you can offer to help and both of you can stop listening to the thing.