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Comment by nemothekid | Hacker News Reader

If my smoke detector makes an obnoxious sound during a controlled fire (like cooking) the product is defective.

You are ignoring the real problem here. The problem is "people who are inconvenienced by their smoke detectors such as an alarm going off when toast is burnt, tend to disable them - leading to death. How do we solve this?" Its quite obvious the solution isn't "Don't disable them" because if it was I'm sure nest's product wouldn't exist.

As a product designer, its very hard to change human behavior. If humans are disabling smoke detectors because they are inconvenienced, either the product is wrong, or user education is wrong. I'm hard pressed to believe you are going to educate people to not disable their smoke detectors while cooking, when people still by and large drive without seatbelts.

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I think you missed the "A smoke alarm in or near the kitchen is incorrectly placed if it is producing frequent false alarms" part of the original statement.

Often placing it sufficiently far away from the kitchen isn't possible. I have a fairly large—by NYC standards—apartment. Our smoke alarm is around 3 corners and 20 feet down the hallway, but it goes off LIKE CRAZY. Basically if the stove gets hot, it's going to go off. We have 11' ceilings, and nothing I can stand on in the apartment is tall enough for me to reach it. After waving towels at it and poking at the silence button with a broom handle ad nauseam, I borrowed a ladder and took it down before cooking a big dinner for guests. I know I should reinstall it, but the silence has been fantastic.

So yes, I think the Nest smoke alarm does have a major upside: people in my situation would actually use it.

Not to sound too snarky, but I would look at your cooking technique. Also, as others have mentioned, a better smoke alarm may also alleviate the problem.

> a better smoke alarm may also alleviate the problem

Like the nest?

I was thinking of something like http://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-SA320CN-Double-Battery-Pow... for $20.

Have you seasoned a cast iron pan lately?

Yup. Our smoke alarm in the kitchen didn't go off when I did.

How do you know it works then?

Totally—when I moved in I figured I must have been burning everything so I started cooking more carefully and at lower temperatures, which didn't help. I searched the model number when I took it down to see if other people were having similar problems, and if I recall it's a new, high end FirstAlert model that goes for around $100, which puts the Nest at a pretty competitive price point, too.

Cooking properly frequently requires lots of heat and creates smoke. Peek into a commercial kitchen sometime. I suffered a childhood of sad, grey, rubbery steaks until I grew up and learned you're supposed to sear them. Same with many other types of food.

So let's say the builder is a dumbass and placed it incorrectly. What homeowner is going to move it? I would guess the percentage is something along the lines of 1%.

I would. You would. But we're not the norm. Not all products are designed toward the DIY crowd.

In the UK most smoke alarms are not mains connected and run solely off a battery. As such they can be easily repositioned.

No I wouldn't. My detectors are wired, and moving them means rewiring, which means tearing apart the entire ceiling. Not gonna happen, not by me and not by anybody I need to pay to do it. Luckily my builder wasn't a dumbass.

Lets also not forget the people that rent. As a renter I cannot make changes to the house without approval from the landlord. I can, however, replace the smoke detector and leave the one that came with the house in a drawer until I move out.

The statement "A smoke alarm in or near the kitchen is incorrectly placed if it is producing frequent false alarms" may very well be true but it doesn't matter. People have and will continue to disable their smoke/CO detectors if they are annoying. The ability to simply wave at the detector to get it to shut off (Like after burning your toast) means that people will simply wave to shut off the alarm instead of disabling it.

Even with what I know about fire death statistics, best practices, and what not I have disabled fire detectors before for any/all of the following reasons:

* Low battery alarm

* Going off at just a whiff of smoke

* Randomly making noises even after replacing the battery

Now you can say that it was incredibly stupid of me to disable them, and it probably was, but that doesn't change the fact that people's first instinct is just to disable it.

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