I recently spent a week in a hotel in Beijing, and despite having a non-smoking room, I had to change rooms three times before getting one that didn’t smell of cigarette smoke. Seeing that these rooms all had smoke detectors, it got me wondering how much cigarette smoke it would take to set off a smoke detector. These rooms all had them, but obviously the cigarettes didn’t set them off.
And the corollary to this, do rooms that allow smoking NOT have smoke detectors?
Are you sure the smoke detectors were even connected?
I have heard of hotels where the smoke ‘detectors’ were really just fake fittings, to reassure the customers, without the expense of installing & maintaining real smoke detectors. Same with security cameras, or even fire alarms!
Hotels frequently use less-sensitive smoke detectors. There’s a lot of reasons for this - people do[/ smoke in their rooms, it’s a pain in the ass evacuating a hotel, some models can go off from steam if people shower with the bath door open, etc. Some hotels even install hidden, set-temperature backup alarms because people disabling the fire alarm and smoking is such a massive pain in the ass.
A friend just installed one over my kitchen, it went off just now as I was making toast in a pan … not burning, just lightly toasting. I climbed on a chair and untwisted the wee demon, that’ll show it.