My CO2 / Smoke Detector Scared a Year off my life today, and I have questions. Long.

SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 59 points –

I have a back bedroom with sealed windows, and it gets dry sometimes. It's for a person with horrible allergies. This room is so clean you could eat off the floor so to speak. I run a humidifier set to 60% with distilled water for the person in there. When I checked on it last night to see if it needed to be filled, the humidity had gone up to 82%. This was because a ceiling fan had been left on and the sensor in the humidifier wasn't getting correct data from the moving air (I think). My hallway smoke / Co2 detector went off as soon as I opened the bedroom door. It would not clear until I pointed a hair dryer at it, then it shut the hell up.

TLDR: My smoke detector doesn't like humidity all of a sudden?? and went off and would not clear. It has been more humid than that in the entire house without humidifiers running, and I have the same detectors in other locations with no issues.

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So it's the smoke detector, not the CO detector? These are separate devices. A smoke detector will typically be on the ceiling and a CO detector will typically be close to the floor.

I've had smoke detectors which are set off by steam, such as from a hot shower. You can replace it with a style of detector which operates differently, not using photoelectricity to be triggered. Keeping batteries fresh is also supposed to help, but I don't know if it really does.

That said, you may want an alarm for humidity because 82% is quite high and may cause damage to the home.

If you're referring to Carbon Monoxide detectors [I recognize the OP made an error calling them CO2] commonly referred to as "smoke/CO", then, in the US at least, smoke and Carbon Monoxide detectors are usually combined units. I've never found one to be separated like that. A common example is below. Carbon Monoxide is similar, if not lighter than common air density, so putting one on the floor wouldn't make any real difference.

https://www.firstalert.com/us/en/products/alarms/combo-smoke-carbon-monoxide-alarms/prc710-10-year-battery-combination-smoke-carbon-monoxide-alarm-prc710/

Huh. I'm in the US, and have always had these as separate units because smoke detectors function best on the ceiling and carbon monoxide detectors function best by the floor (allegedly).