I've had a smoke detector that would routinely trigger when the clothes dryer was operating. I think they detect steam as well as smoke.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
59 points (94.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35809 readers
1748 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I had an old one that would go off every time anyone would take a shower. Just another vote for steam setting it off.
Certain types of smoke detectors dont detect 'smoke' or 'steam' exactly, but they monitor a small section of air in the unit and if there is enough particulate matter in the air the sensor is triggered and it goes off.
Because of this they are sensitive to aresols too, such as spray on deoderant.
This is almost certainly the correct answer. If it's a photoelectric-type detector it'll be set off by any interruption of the beam. This can be smoke, steam/vapor, dust, etc.
You can replace them with ionization type smoke alarms (or "dual type" alarms) and this will make it less sensitive to non-smoke interference.
This is also why vaping can set off smoke alarms.
I work with fire alarm systems, as others have said, smoke, steam, dust, and even insects inside the detection chamber will trigger a photoelectric smoke det.
Good to know it's also a plague of locusts detector.
So it's the smoke detector, not the CO detector? These are separate devices. A smoke detector will typically be on the ceiling and a CO detector will typically be close to the floor.
I've had smoke detectors which are set off by steam, such as from a hot shower. You can replace it with a style of detector which operates differently, not using photoelectricity to be triggered. Keeping batteries fresh is also supposed to help, but I don't know if it really does.
That said, you may want an alarm for humidity because 82% is quite high and may cause damage to the home.
If you're referring to Carbon Monoxide detectors [I recognize the OP made an error calling them CO2] commonly referred to as "smoke/CO", then, in the US at least, smoke and Carbon Monoxide detectors are usually combined units. I've never found one to be separated like that. A common example is below. Carbon Monoxide is similar, if not lighter than common air density, so putting one on the floor wouldn't make any real difference.
Huh. I'm in the US, and have always had these as separate units because smoke detectors function best on the ceiling and carbon monoxide detectors function best by the floor (allegedly).
How weird, I've never seen that configuration. Today I learned. I just wanted to add that in case anyone read that and thought their living space was unsafe with a combination detector. The EPA says, if they are CO specific, to put them about eye level from the floor, or on the ceiling.
Smoke detectors frequently work by having a teensy little radioactive emitter and a teensy radioactivity detector somewhere close to it. It works a bit like a laser trap in a video game or movie, if you break the laser-beam by walking through it, it triggers the alarm because the detector can no longer see the beam.
But it doesn't have to be smoke. Water particles will do it, dust can do it, especially when there's construction work going on putting the dust in the air... it doesn't matter. It just needs to be enough to break the connection between emitter and detector.
Wet steam and the vapor from humidifiers is pretty effective at triggering it because the droplets are bigger than regular humidity.
I assume you mean "CO" detector. CO2 is Carbon Dioxide and I don't think you went out and purchased and installed a detector for that.
High humidity levels can absolutely cause a false alarm on a CO detector. Example: https://safeinhomeair.com/carbon-monoxide-humidity/
I'll also point out that not all CO detectors are created equal. There was a lot of news about this earlier this year where a number of CO detectors sold on Amazon simply did not work, or did not meet published safety and detection standards. Here's an example of some of the serious warnings that were published: https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2023/CPSC-Warns-Consumers-to-Immediately-Stop-Using-GLBSUNION-and-CUZMAK-Digital-Display-Carbon-Monoxide-Detectors-Due-to-Failure-to-Alert-Consumers-to-Deadly-Carbon-Monoxide-Sold-on-Amazon-com#:~:text=The%20CO%20detectors%20were%20sold,on%20www.SaferProducts.gov . Following that announcement, there were several other brands and models that were flagged as being non-compliant. If you haven't done so already, find your make/model and verify that it's not one of the sub-standard units that were pawned on Amazon for years.
CO detectors also need to be replaced (they don't last forever). Most use chemistry to detect CO levels, and that chemistry begins degrading as soon as the unit is built. Some last just a couple years, some are designed to last up to 10 years, but the point is - they all go bad eventually. How old is your detector?
Smoke detectors can also be fooled by high moisture.
I usually don't buy smoke/CO combo units (I prefer separate detectors for each thing), but I do have a combo unit in a hallway in my upstairs - and it's got a great feature where it announces by voice what is triggering the alarm ("smoke" or "carbon monoxide"). Does yours do that or does it just sound the same alarm regardless of what was detected?
My mistake, it's carbon monoxide and smoke
I'm far from an expert on humidity or electronics, but if there was any condensation it's possible a circuit got bridged inside the alarm and triggered it.
This sounds wild but you don't live near Seattle, do you? We just had a minor earthquake and the next morning all my smoke detectors went hog wild. Apparently that can happen?