If Johnny Cash had one of these, he wouldn't have written that song...

It's a well established fact that my basement is creepy. For an in depth analysis of why my basement is creepy check out my post from October 25, 2006 on this blog. Did you read that? I told you it was creepy.

Soooo........

Here is the latest finding in my creepy basement:


It's a fire detector. Not smoke. FIRE. As far as I can tell, if my basement bursts into flames, the liquid in the canister will heat up. When the liquid reaches a certain temperature, it will rise up to the top of the canister and melt a wax ring. Once the wax ring is melted, it releases some sort of component that shoots up into the top of the contraption, which will then allow this relic to emit a repetitious loud noise.

It seems like it's not really a detector, per say, because by the time this thing turns itself on, the fire would already have to be consuming my entire basement. So rather than a dectector, it's sort of a "you're so screwed" buzzer.

I don't know how old this thing is, or if it even works. I don't want to test it, because there isn't any sort of instruction on it for turning it off. I'll see if I can find out more information about it.. because I'm curious about this thing.