I could've used it in my last apartment. Ours used to be so sensitive, even boiling water in a kettle would set it off.

Hey, you're lucky to even have that microwave fan! I've yet to live in an apartment with a range hood. A window and a fan is all I've got.

But yes, two apartments ago just frying bacon would set off the smoke alarm. And I loves me some bacon.

I had a smoke alarm with a mute button and I was so grateful for it! It stayed off for quite awhile, or at least long enough to finish what I was cooking. Now in my new place the smoke alarm is wired into the ceiling, not powered by batteries, so I can't turn it off but it is not as sensitive.

In one of my old apartments, shortly after we moved in, my roommate and I suddenly got a wild hair and decided to make ourselves a huge breakfast -- eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausage, fried tomato slices, oatmeal, tea...it was a very small kitchen/living room space, and we very quickly overran the smoke alarm.

My roommate, who was 6'2", went up to the alarm, poked it a couple places to try to get it to turn off, and then simply grabbed the entire thing in his hand and yanked it out of the ceiling.

I didn't replace it until I moved out twelve years later.

Sigh, ours goes off when I boil water, like KidMoe's. Don't tell my insurance brokers but it's battery-less on the bookcase right now. I am going to get a kitchen fire extinguisher, though. And maybe one day I'll have a hood?

My roommate and I have found a way to get the better of our hard-wired smoke detector- When we are to cook something potentially smoky, we cover the unit with a gallon-sized zipper bag (may have even discovered the idea here- wish I could remember so I could give adequate credit) Works like a charm, even if it looks ridiculous.

I do turn it off, but this is really a great device. the MUTE is fabulous. in my new apartment, I am definately buying it.

Our is sitting on the kitchen counter. I think it may never get plugged back in.

But, we have two smoke detectors in the basement and one outside our bedrooms, so I feel safe not having the one not on.

high ceilings and the 2 sensitive fire alarms are both near the kitchen. Yes we are battery-less at the moment. I should get a third one in the front room, just in case.

Anytime I turn on the stove or oven my detector goes off. Makes me nuts. I get the stool, climb up and just take it down. So I don't forget to put it back up I put it on my pillow - I can't go to sleep til its back up :) It might help if my range hood actually vented anywhere vs. just running and blowing everything around.... argh, the hell of renting.

At college I have heard of kids that duct tape a plastic bag over the detector to keep it from going off... not very nice looking, but definitely effective.

I don't think my smoke detector ever goes off while I'm cooking -- I wonder if it would go off during a fire... Better check on that!

Ok, so I had the same problem, only whenever I took a shower (the alarm would go off when the steam began to build up). A bit of googling revealed that there are two types of smoke alarms - ionization and photoelectric. You are supposed to have both, or a dual sensor one, in your house. Technically the ionization ones are better for kitchens (and are the cheaper, more common ones anyway), because they detect small particles (like steam, cooking smoke, etc.). But that meas lots of false alarms. Photoelectric ones sense smoldering fires better, and don't go off like crazy when you're cooking or showering. BUT my research assured me that they BOTH detect fires of all kinds.

So - I got a more expensive photoelectric one for the hallway near the bathroom, and solved the false alarms. Then I got a new, cheap, ionization one for my bedroom - to wake me if a fire started while I was sleeping.

Mine are hard-wired the the very high ceilings, and there are sprinklers (hopefully those never malfunction), but when I was growing up my mother burnt everything she ever tried to cook, so fire safety was dispatched forever for the sake of nerves.

I lived in one apartment that had the smoke alarm right above the stove. How terrible is that! It didn't matter what I was cooking, it could have just been boiled water and that thing would go off. It was a small enough apartment and there was another alarm elsewhere that I just took its battery out and never replaced it.

Ours has a mute, but it only lasts for about a minute or so before it goes off again. And our ceilings are so tall that I have to swing with the broom handle just to reach the mute button.

I see your boiling water, and raise you toasting bread in the toaster, which sits 20 feet away from the smoke detector. Mine is also hardwired into the electrical, and the only thing that kept it quiet was breaking the speaker.

Mine's wired in to the ceiling, but it goes off every time I roast anything. I hate it. I've had some luck with closing the sliding doors between the kitchen and living room and waving a dishrag in front of it, but I'll have to try the ziplock bag.

we have a mute button and it stops the beeping for just long enough so i can close the kitchen door (that usually does the trick).
the only bad part is when i have to run out of the kitchen to get a chair and two dictionaries to reach our super-high ceilings. :o(

Mine is hardwired into the wall about four feet from my stove. My kitchen is tiny, so it's really a big problem. My boyfriend found a graceful way to wrap a dishtowel around the alarm for a quick mask, but, even better, a fellow blogger told me that he'd just wrap his in aluminum foil. It works every time! After I'm done cooking, I take the aluminum mask off and leave it nearby so I can just slip it on when I need it.

So many missing options there. I can't disable my smoke alarm on account of its being hard wired. We've devised all kinds of shenanigans (a box fan propped at an angle on a milk crate held up by a step ladder. for example) over the years. It never occurred to me to cover it -- I only just heard a rumor that such a thing could work.

So right now, ours has a plastic bag around it and it is blissfully quiet. I left the stepladder blocking the hallway so that we'll be reminded to take the bag off.

I've witnessed more than one horrible fire (bf's neighbors' Christmas lights, once; arson upstairs from my bf the second time -- different boyfriends, different cities, I'm not a magnet for disaster, promise) so between that and just living in an old building with neighbors downstairs and up, I would never leave my smoke alarm disabled, and I've always (always) installed them myself in apartments that didn't come with one (most, so far, which is not okay. but that is another story.)

My parents always put the disabled smoke alarm right on the kitchen table. By the time you're ready to eat it can go back where it belongs and you aren't going to forget it if it is sitting in the middle of the table.