Heat alarm in HMO kitchen

[Guest Bigi]

Since we have a HMO we had a certified electrician coming to fit all the smoke and heat alarms as legally required. Now almost once every week the heat alarm in the kitchen goes off whilst normal cooking with extractor hood on. No burned food or oil or anything. Maybe hot steam when opening a bigger pot, opening the oven just long enough to check if the food's ready, maybe a little bit of smoke when making pancakes... We always cook with constantly open window now even when it is freezing outside... One tenant who used to cook in the night due to his shift stopped doing it because he's afraid he might wake up everyone.  When the alarm goes on it goes obviously on in every room of the house until we got the long stick and managed to press the button to turn it off. Not only that this is very annoying but also no one in the house reacts to the alarm anymore... It's like: oh well, someone's just cooking... So that makes the alarm ineffective. Everyone just covers their ears and waits first until the "someone' has managed to turn it off. No one bothers to check the other rooms to make sure the alarm wasn't caused by a fire in another room... I think we all agree that in a case of a real fire every minute can count and safe life... We contacted the electrician who gave us the certificate to make sure he got the correct distance. He assured us that this is the requirement... I've heard about the same problem the other day from a tenant who lives in a HMO... 

[AnthonyB]

Are you sure it's really a heat detector? Post a photo of it (the forum has the facility to do this) so we can check.

I've only once had a premises where heat detection triggered in a domestic kitchen where it was located so that when the oven was opened it got a full on blast of heated air, which because it was a 'rate of rise' detector it alarmed (this type reacts to any rapid change in temperature). As the kitchen layout precluded moving the detector we switched it for a fixed temperature heat detector that ignores the rate of rise of temperature and only reacts to a fixed level