Is there any way to lower the sensitivity of my fire detector?

Factual Questions
1

This really sounds like a stupid and dangerous question. In fact, it probably is. But here’s my situation: I have the most hysterical fire alarm I’ve ever encountered. I live in a small apartment, but the alarm is on the opposite side from my stove, about 10-15m away. Nonetheless, even when I have the apron’s venting fan on full, if even a single drop of whatever I’m cooking ends up on the element, the alarm goes off in about 30 seconds. I can rarely see any smoke, and often I can’t even smell it.

This is, understandably, frustrating. It also probably pisses my neighbours off. Is there any way to take this down a notch? For context, in the last apartment I lived in, I’d usually have a small and obvious cloud of smoke hovering over my oven before I’d be concerned that the alarm was going to go off.

2

many have a button (some have two buttons, some have one button that pushes to one side or the other) that desensitizes the detector for some amount of time (10 minutes maybe) to allow for things like cooking.

see if yours is like that or can be replaced by one like that.

3

First Alert, a maker of these alarms, has some excellent information and suggestions. :slight_smile:

4

When I had that problem, I just asked the apartment manager to replace the alarm.

His first knee-jerk reaction, of course, was that the battery was probably running down and I should just replace that. After some arguing, he agreed to replace the whole alarm. (Actually, IIRC, I went around the manager and went direct to the maintenance guy.)

Anyway, the new alarm doesn’t do that. So maybe you just got a hypersensitive alarm, and you just need to get a different one.

(Of course, the manager will just hang onto your old alarm and put into some other apartment eventually. :dubious: )

5

Thanks for the link. I have the same problem in my home - even steam from a boiling pot once set off the fire alarm that was in my hallway, so I eventually removed it. (I have other alarms elsewhere,mind you.)

Maybe I’ll give a photoelectric model a try and see if it helps.

6

Ionization detectors are notorious for false alarms, especially in the kitchen, and don’t respond quickly at all to smouldering fires. They’ve even been outlawed in some jurisdictions.