The Best Ways to Prevent the Smoke Detector From Triggering While Cooking

Smoke detectors are essential home security gadgets, but some of them can be a little overzealous – sounding an alarm if you leave your English muffin in the toaster for a minute or two longer than necessary.

Of course, you want your smoke detector to keep doing its job, but there are ways to (safely) prevent it from going off while cooking. Here’s what you need to know.

How to stop the smoke detector from working while cooking

As annoying as the endless beeping sound is, the fact that your smoke detector goes off when you are baking, frying, toasting, or roasting is a sign that it is in working order.

And while it might be tempting to simply remove the batteries, don’t: it’s all too easy to forget to put them back in, leaving that part of your home without an important safety device.

You’re probably familiar with tactics like opening a window or waving a towel in front of a smoke detector to keep it from going off while cooking, but here are a few more permanent solutions:

Rethink its placement

Ideally, your smoke detector should be at least 10 feet away from an oven, toaster, deep fryer, or any other appliance where cooking can produce smoke. Keep in mind that this applies even if it’s not technically in your kitchen; for example, if it is in a hallway, dining room, pantry, or other adjacent room that is less than 10 feet from where you cook.

Choose a photoelectric smoke detector.

Smoke detectors come in two types: photoelectric and ionization . Photoelectric smoke detectors are less sensitive to steam and are generally the best choice for kitchens (and bathrooms with tubs or showers).

Replace batteries

When your smoke detector’s battery runs out, it may trip when there is actually no smoke. Here is an explanation from the University of South Carolina College of Engineering and Computing :

In most sensors you can think of, the signal strength goes up when they detect what they’re supposed to. But instead, most smoke detectors go off when their electrical current drops. This is because the smoke in the air will reduce the current. If your battery is running low, the current flowing through your sensor also drops. And so you can get a false positive result.

As a general rule, change the batteries in your smoke detector twice a year .