Holidays, Home Construction and False Alarms

At our home, we are renovating the master bedroom bathroom suite.

Demolition and roughing in were completed on Friday, just before the long July 4th weekend. My weekend project task was to varnish the new, solid-core birch doors. I’d prepped for the final coating to be applied on Monday morning, so they would be dry for work to resume on Tuesday.

We’re not sure whether is was the CO from left over varnish fumes, in combination with lighting the cooktop to make morning coffee, or a puff of dust that may have blown over the CO sensor, but something triggered our smoke/CO detector alarm. This is a very exciting thing to happen at 7 AM on a vacation day morning when you are relaxing in bed with your coffee!

We deactivated the alarm after it went off, but we missed the incoming phone call from the alarm service. So our local police and fire departments visited us about 5 minutes later. We felt pretty embarrassed at having inconvenienced these guys on their holiday morning, and we’re pretty sure we woke up a few neighbors, too.

Word to the wise: Home alarm systems can be triggered by dust and CO. Your system’s wires can also accidentally be cut during construction. Always let your security service know when construction is underway at your home, and be sure to give your construction pros a code and password in case the service calls, and a telephone number for them to contact if a false alarm occurs.

I hope your holiday weekend was less eventful than mine….