Less than two weeks ago on February 4th, we experienced a record-low temperature of 10 below zero. Today we had a record high for this day of 64 degrees as shown on my car’s temperature display. When I took this photo, I was returning from Home Depot where I purchased 4 combination smoke/CO detectors, 6 smoke-only detectors, and 2 heat detectors, all required to meet the fire code for new home construction. The six hundred dollar bill was small compared to many other purchases for the house, but it irks me that this expense will be incurred every ten years when the internal batteries reach the end of life and all the units will wind up in a landfill. I would love to see an investigative report on how this requirement made its way into the fire code.