The smoke alarm goes off every time I cook dinner
I'm fanning it with a dish towel. The dog is under the bed. The chicken is fine. — Apartment renter, 2019
The smoke detector was found by a man giving up. In the late 1930s a Swiss physicist named Walter Jaeger couldn't get his poison-gas sensor to work, lit a cigarette, and watched the needle move. Since mid-2024, new alarms have to stay quiet in a lab test while hamburgers broil nearby. That same year a federal test kitchen found they weren't clearly better at ignoring cooking than the old ones. They're still very good at detecting dinner.
For now: keep smoke alarms at least 10 feet from the stove; closer invites false alarms.
Run into this too?
Know a fix? Leave it for the next person. Any name will do. Every comment is read. A fix that holds up goes on the record. A fix that doesn't is noted, quietly.
Follow to comment Already following? Sign in
Free. One email a week.
Did we get something wrong? It happens. We fix it, note the change, and take it personally. Tell the clerk
Already solved somewhere? Tell us. Every claimed solve is checked before anything changes. We are hard to impress. Report a solve