If you don't mind, readers, we'd like to take a little survey. Do you have a smoke alarm installed in your kitchen, and if you do: how often does that alarm go off while you're cooking?
In all likelihood, you didn't even burn anything; the fumes alone were enough to trigger the alarm.
Most of us have had this experience, and all of us have developed our own ways of dealing with the problem.
Maybe you just open a window to let out the fumes - a practical solution, but not exactly ideal in the middle of November.
Perhaps you hired a butler to stand beneath the alarm with a handkerchief, waving away the smoke with a sophisticated flick of the wrist.
Or maybe you turn off the alarm altogether, leaving your kitchen at risk of fire. You don't have to listen to that awful sound anymore, but it's incredibly unsafe.
Why These Annoying Alarms?
The most common (i.e. cheapest) type of smoke detector contains an ionisation sensor, which is overly sensitive to everyday cooking fumes.It's certainly important to keep your kitchen safe from fire, but these sensors aren't the best thing to have around when you make a tiny mistake in the kitchen.
Luckily, a smoke alarm isn't the only solution out there: a much better idea for the kitchen is to install a heat detector such as the Aico Ei164RC, which will trigger an alarm once the temperature reaches 58° Celsius.
Note: see the full range of Aico fire alarms, heat alarms, smoke alarms, and CO alarms available at Sparks.
It's much safer than turning off the alarm altogether, easy to install with RadioLINK connectivity, and much less costly than hiring that butler.
