My house has very tall ceilings on the second and third floors, which means very inconveniently placed smoke detectors. In our bedroom, the device is about twelve feet up, if not more. This is, of course, exactly where you want such a device, but this is not without its challenges.
As I am not twelve feet tall, I had not bothered to inspect said detector since moving in. I could see a red light, and assumed all was well. They’re integral detectors with a backup battery, so drain on the battery is presumably quite low — so low, in fact, that it took more than three years for the battery to began circling the drain, emitting its beep occasionally and irregularly, but (mostly) not at night.
We, of course, ignored it.
As the beep became more frequent and persistent, we began asking friends about borrowing ladders, but the logistics were always a bit ugly — neither Erin nor I own a car that can transport an extension ladder long enough to reach the detector. The best option seemed to be walking such a ladder over from Chris and Joann’s place, about half a mile away — a plan that was appealing on a surreal level, at least. (“Where are you going with that ladder?” “What ladder?”)
Saturday night, the beeps reached a fever pitch. Around 4:00 AM, we decamped to the spare bedroom and promised ourselves we’d resolve the battery issue on Sunday, and that we did. At Home Depot — previously maligned in this space, you may recall — we located a weird sort of hybrid ladder made by Gorilla (not “made by A gorilla,” mind you) that manages to be both an extension ladder and a stepladder. It’s quite a clever animal, and compact to boot — in its extension form, it’s good for eighteen feet, but is only about five and a half feet long when fully folded; a similar extension ladder would be twice as long. It wasn’t cheap — $200, vs. about $120-$150 for a regular extension ladder — but the added flexibility more than compensates. It’s certainly cheaper than owning BOTH types, and takes up less space to boot.
Of course, this development makes me wonder how long ladders as a category have gone without significant advances in design or materials. Certainly extension ladders became more viable at greater lengths as materials got lighter and stronger, but they’re still fundamentally a straight-line unsupported ladder, and I’d be willing to guess such devices have been around for thousands of years. In any case, it appears that the Gorilla is the result not of material science advances, but of simple human cleverness, and that appeals to this here geek.