Can A Humidifier Set Off A Smoke Alarm?

Smoke detectors are an essential addition to any house. They warn you if there is a fire in your home that can potentially save your life.

Daily, smoke detectors save countless lives. You can find smoke alarms everywhere, offices, theaters, shopping malls, you name it. But if the smoke alarm goes off randomly, people will start to ignore it, and the alarm will lose its effectiveness.

This is also why it is essential to learn if a humidifier can trigger the smoke alarm.

Can a Humidifier Trigger a Smoke Alarm?

Yes, a humidifier can trigger a smoke alarm. As I will discuss below, it is hard for many smoke alarms to differentiate between water particles and smoke.

We already saw that humidity could often be the reason for false alarms in your smoke detector. This is why since humidifiers are basically increasing the humidity levels in the air in your house, they do cause smoke alarms to get triggered.

However, a humidifier is a household item that a lot of people like to use or even depend on. The humidifier can help to avoid many different health conditions and relieve discomfort caused by insufficient humidity.

You can have itchy eyes, dry skin, and irritation in your nasal passages and throat from low humidity levels. This is why having a humidifier in your house is something constructive, and you cannot just throw it away because of your smoke alarms. But what to do when your smoke alarm is being triggered by your humidifier?

Can a cool-mist humidifier set off a smoke alarm?

Yes, a cool-mist humidifier can set off a smoke alarm. Cool-mist humidifiers evaporate cold water into the air to adjust the humidity of a room. Since there are burn hazards with warm-mist humidifiers, a lot of people prefer cool-mist humidifiers. They are safer to be used around children and small pets.

Cool-mist humidifiers can set off smoke alarms. If the humidifier is placed closer to the smoke alarm, then the possibility of it triggering the smoke alarm goes up. A cool-mist humidifier might not use hot water to increase the humidity, but smoke alarms cannot always detect between water and smoke particles. That is why any humidifier can trigger a smoke alarm – whether it is warm-mist or cool-mist.

Can Humidity Affect Smoke Alarm?

The short answer would be yes. High humidity does affect smoke alarms. A lot of people have found a connection between increased humidity and their smoke alarms going off. A letter from Bainbridge Island Fire Department lists high humidity and steam among the common causes of false alarms.

Now, you might wonder why a smoke detector would get triggered by something like mist or steam. This is mainly because smoke alarms are generally unable to differentiate between smoke and water as moisture particles since they both set off sensors of the fire alarm in a similar way.

There are two types of smoke detectors commonly used in households. One of them uses Ionization technology, while others use Photoelectric technology.

Ionization Smoke Detectors

These smoke alarms come with a small amount of radioactive material inside that is constantly ionizing the air within a pair of detector plates. The electric current that passes through the ionized air gets disrupted when smoke particles are attached to the air molecules that are ionized. Thus the alarm goes off.

Photoelectric Smoke Alarms

A photoelectric fire alarm is a lot more straightforward. You have a pair of sensors between which a light beam passes through. It works similarly to the safety sensors that you have in your garage door opener. When the light beam is interrupted by smoke, it triggers the alarm, and thus the alarm goes off.

The Ionization smoke alarms are not as popular anymore as they used to be. It is partly due to the fact that many problems arise when it comes to disposing of radioactive waste. There is also the fact that smoke alarms implementing the Ionization technology tend to trigger more false alarms when it comes to humidity.

There are still benefits to having this technology, though. Ionization technology does a better job at detecting flash fires, and Photoelectric technology can better see fires that begin with a long smoldering. So it is recommended by many fire marshals that you actually use a smoke alarm that combines the technology from both of these detectors.

What Type Of Smoke Alarm Is More Sensitive To A Humidifier?

We already discussed the two types of smoke alarms used in households – ionized and photoelectric. Smoke alarms can often get falsely triggered. If there is a humidifier in the room, then it can be the cause of a false smoke alarm.

An ionized smoke alarm is more sensitive to a humidifier. Ionized smoke detectors include a radioactive material that perpetually ionizes the air. When smoke particles become linked to ionized air molecules, the flowing electric current is interrupted, and the alarm goes off. A humidifier can disrupt the electric current and cause the smoke alarm to go off.

How to Stop Humidifier From Setting Off Smoke Detectors?

Even though smoke alarms are some of the most valuable gadgets to keep you and your family safe, their false alarms are quite an annoying and irritating experience. This is why you would be better off taking some precautions so that you can avoid this problem.

Here are some precautions you can take to keep your smoke alarm from having false triggers:

• Place your smoke alarms in the right places. It is better to keep your smoke detectors away from the area where you will be using your humidifiers, such as the bedroom or the nursery, and away from the shower and bathroom.
• Maintain a healthy humidity level. You don’t really have to continuously run your humidifier.
• Try to adjust the sensitivity levels for your fire alarm if it comes with such a feature. It will avoid most of the false triggers.
• Try to clean your smoke alarms regularly. This helps to clean up the outer casing of any condensed water that may be on it. It is also recommended that you have your smoke alarms regularly serviced as well.
• To get better protection from these false triggers, you could try to use both Photoelectric and Ionization types of smoke alarms in parallel.

Following the methods mentioned above will definitely help you to reduce the chances of smoke alarms getting false triggers from your humidifier.

Final Words

Smoke alarms are a security measure for households. They can save lives and reduce destructive fire damage. Humidifiers are also important to maintain the humidity in the air.

Using both appliances at once is possible, but there are some possibilities of false alarms. The water particles released from humidifiers can trigger smoke alarms and cause short-term panic. But it is better to deal with some false alarms than to put people at risk or compromise indoor air quality.