Anyone any idea why a smoke alarm would become sensitive to water vapour?
One of mine is on the landing and the bathroom door opens onto the landing (not a terribly unusual setup I'd imagine). Since the summer it's started going off when I have a shower. No idea of a make or type as they were in the house when I moved in and since they make a noise when I hit the test button and warn me every couple of years that they need a new battery I've just left them alone (apart from the aforesaid new batteries every so often).
Last time I looked at the workings of these was in A-Level physics in the early 90's where we were told they tended to be an alpha radiation source with a detector and smoke particles would block the particles so when the rate of detection drops below a certain threshold they would be triggered. Is this still the technology used? I'm assuming some sort of emitter-detector pair even if it's a different technology.
Now my theory as to what's changed and I'm probably just using you folks as a sounding board as I'm pretty sure I know what's happening..... I'm guessing we've reached the half-life or an appreciable amount of it on the source or that the "other" type of emitter has deteriorated over time and it's borderline putting out enough "whatever" so it's not taking much obstruction to make it go off. Sound plausible?
If that's the case then a new pair will fix it (coz I'd change the one downstairs as a mattter of course). I haven't looked into them yet but I don't think they're overly pricey so it's not beyond the realms of possibility to just swap them on the off chance. So here's question two in the hopes that the knowledge is here - are there any different types and specifically ones to avoid as they might be overly sensitive to water vapour in the air?
One of mine is on the landing and the bathroom door opens onto the landing (not a terribly unusual setup I'd imagine). Since the summer it's started going off when I have a shower. No idea of a make or type as they were in the house when I moved in and since they make a noise when I hit the test button and warn me every couple of years that they need a new battery I've just left them alone (apart from the aforesaid new batteries every so often).
Last time I looked at the workings of these was in A-Level physics in the early 90's where we were told they tended to be an alpha radiation source with a detector and smoke particles would block the particles so when the rate of detection drops below a certain threshold they would be triggered. Is this still the technology used? I'm assuming some sort of emitter-detector pair even if it's a different technology.
Now my theory as to what's changed and I'm probably just using you folks as a sounding board as I'm pretty sure I know what's happening..... I'm guessing we've reached the half-life or an appreciable amount of it on the source or that the "other" type of emitter has deteriorated over time and it's borderline putting out enough "whatever" so it's not taking much obstruction to make it go off. Sound plausible?
If that's the case then a new pair will fix it (coz I'd change the one downstairs as a mattter of course). I haven't looked into them yet but I don't think they're overly pricey so it's not beyond the realms of possibility to just swap them on the off chance. So here's question two in the hopes that the knowledge is here - are there any different types and specifically ones to avoid as they might be overly sensitive to water vapour in the air?