A retired couple driven to despair by a constant beeping sound ripped out walls in a bid to find the cause - only to find it was from a smoke alarm buried in a chest of drawers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-19921055
We get calls in the middle of the night from idiots who think there is a fire in their house because they can hear the alarm sounding. We send engineers round who notice the beep once every minute or so, check the alarm and replace the flat battery. They ask the residents if there was a fire shouldn't they have called the fire brigade first to which the usual reply is "I didn't think of that" Same as they didn't think that by getting off their arses and changing the battery themselves it would stop the beep. Some of the dum dums I have to work for are justification for abortions and sterilisation.
