Back story: we have an open floor plan on the first floor, and I hate it - every sound travels the full 1200 square feet, and every cooking wisp of smoke does ditto. Right to the single smoke detector, mounted on a center point ceiling, 9 feet up. (I hate 9-foot ceilings, too.) It’s ideally located to protect the house on that floor, but every slight wisp of smoke that escapes the stove or oven sets it off. I can’t move it, because it’s AC-backup and wired to the other 6 in the house - which means that when I broil something, and don’t carefully manage the smoke, the whole house screams. “Dinner’s ready” is no longer even a joke. (I usually grill things that I’m broiling, but in this endlessly cold and snowy winter, it hasn’t been an option.)
So. Ultra-sensitive alarm. Sets off whole house, annoying everyone. Goes off on slightest wisp from cooking. Can’t move it. 9-foot ceiling makes it difficult to unship it for cooking. Don’t have much choice but to do smoky cooking. What to do?
Cover it. With (1) an oversized plastic goblet from the party store (bright red, of course), attached to a length of gray electrical conduit. Set it over the alarm, flex the stem in place… no false alarms, and no chance of forgetting to put the thing back in service when I’m done.
Jack-leg effin’ hillbilly engineering… but it tickles me no end.
You could just get a kitchen smoke detector, which is designed not to freak out from kitchen fumes. That’s probably a much safer idea than what you did.
Of course, the true hillbilly engineer would just replace the smoke detector with a pan of Jiffy-Pop hanging above the door.
it is dangerous to cover the alarms to prevent nuisance alarms because you might forget to uncover it again. though your method is less likely to be forgotten.
a stick to push the desensitizing or hush button works if you have that function.
I was staying at my grandparents once, when I was a teen, and they were also taking care of a second or third cousin who was just a few years old. He had just figured out how to open doors, so after an hour of being there, he’d already tried to escape out the front door a couple of times and was making good headway towards the street. :eek:
I found a shoebox and some rubber bands, looped the rubber band around the base of the doorknob, covered the knob with the shoebox, and stretched the band around the box so that it was firmly held down against the wood.
If the unit were replaceable with one that was “kitchen rated,” or had a cancel button, or had a shaddap-fer-ten-minutes button, I’d have replaced it long ago. It’s part of a set that was originally connected to a home monitoring system, and in general I like the fact that the basement one will set off all seven, etc. So I don’t want to replace the only one on the first floor with one that’s not part of the set.
The real problem is that my 470cfm range hood has some kind of irritating cavitation/backflow problem I need to solve, and pulls at about the rate of a cheap bathroom fan. So unless I am very careful opening the oven, so that the smoke curls straight up and into the hood… wahh wahh wahh wahh. Usually about fifteen seconds later when I am involved in something that prevents me from running over and waving a towel at it.
As a few noted, this CAN be unsafe… but. Taking the unit down, which is what I was doing when I knew I was going to do serious broiling, is less safe - both in removing the monitor and using a rickety indoor ladder to reach something on a 9-foot ceiling. (My big ladder is just too damned heavy and awkward to use for such a purpose.
And no one is ever going to miss (1) a bright red fishbowl cap on (2) a gray plastic pole that is (3) right in the center of the only convenient hallway on the floor.
There’s also a secondary smoke alarm around the corner in the living room - a separate unit I put in to monitor the room with the fireplace insert. So overall safety is diminished only a bit.
I need to modify it to let me break the 9-foot pole down, though. That’s today’s project.
carbon monoxide alarms are good for 7 years and smoke alarms good for 10 years so you will need replacements.
there are networking alarms that aren’t intended to be connected to a monitoring system. if one senses a hazard then they all go off. there are also speaking networked alarms that will make an alarm sound and say “fire” or “carbon monoxide”.
I am basically trying to get through a prolonged winter (1) on something besides boiled food (2) with a half-functional kitchen vent hood (3) and no access to my grill and (4) a really, really poorly placed sensor without (5) invoking the combined hilarity/rage of my family about when dinner is ready.
