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Jonathan Kamens
 
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Default Smoke/fire detector that isn't too sensitive?

Every time we cook something in the broiler, every smoke
detector in our house goes off. I'm talking detectors on the
first floor in the foyer next to the kitchen, up the stairs
in the second-floor hallway, and up the second flight of
stairs in the attic.

The smoke detectors also go off frequently when we do frying
on the stove top, and even when we reheat partially
eaten casseroles (because the area of the dish that no longer
has casserole in it has little pieces of food that "burn"
while the remaining casserole is reheating).

As a result of all this, we find ourselves removing the
batteries from some of our detectors on a regular basis.
This is Very, Very Bad, but it makes it somewhat easier to
understand all those stories about people who die in fires
because their smoke detectors were missing batteries.

If we leave the batteries in all the time and just press the
little "shut up for ten minutes" button on all the detectors
for each false alarm, there's another problem -- we're
teaching our three young children that they should ignore the
alarms. And, of course, pushing the shut-up button doesn't
help much after the kids are in bed and the alarm has already
woken them up.

Is there any decent solution to this problem? Is there a
smoke / fire / heat detector on the market which is good
enough to detect a real fire soon enough to give good warning
without going off every time we cook dinner?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.