Smoke alarms are an important safety measure to protect your family and home from fire. You should have at least one installed on every floor. Unfortunately, a smoke detector beeping intermittently is a major irritant, disturbing your sleep and alarming your children and pets.

However, you should never permanently disconnect a smoke alarm to stop it from beeping. Instead, figure out the cause behind a beeping smoke detector and work to solve the problem. We can help!

If you just cleaned your fire alarm and replaced the battery yet the intermittent beeping continues, this could be a sign it’s time for a smoke detector replacement. These devices typically only last 8 to 10 years. If you’re not sure how old your smoke detector is, remove it from the wall or ceiling and check the manufacturing date on the reverse side to see if old age could be the cause of the malfunction.

Hopefully, you have surge protectors set up in your house to protect your electronics from power surges, or voltage spikes, that can fry your devices. Unfortunately, surge protectors won't save you from the evil cousin of a power surge -- a low voltage event, or brownout. Dimming lights in your house are a sign that you're experiencing a brownout, which over time can cause major damage to your appliances. 

Since your air conditioner is one of your most powerful appliances, any brief outage means it takes a lot of electricity to power the unit back up. To combat the problem, Direct Energy and One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating® offer the Comfort Sentry Contactor, a switching device with totally sealed contacts that goes in your AC unit. If voltage goes below a safe point or "flickers," the Contactor will automatically and safely turn the unit off — and then back on once the right amount of power is back. "In multiple dwellings, it will stagger turning power back on, one in 30 seconds, another in 5 minutes, and so on — to avoid using too much electricity all at once. It's protection built right into your home," explains Dave Borowski, spokesperson for Direct Energy. A smart homeowner will recognize this as an "ounce of prevention."