smoking and smoke detectors

[Mushy]

In all my time in the fire service and elsewhere I have never known cigarette smoke to set off a smoke alarm...even in pubs and clubs in the days before the ban...disco smoke a few times but not by people smoking..anyone else known it to happen and if so how frequent?.....just a question that came up recently

I would have thought it depends on ceiling height, smoke particles and sensitivity of detector used... blimey getting a bit too tecknicul there for me

[Tom Sutton]

IE Electronics say,
Q: Will cigarette smoke cause my Smoke Alarm to alarm?
A: Normally cigarette smoke should not activate a smoke alarm. One should not refrain from fitting a smoke alarm in a room where there is likely to be smoking - in fact the opposite is true, because cigarette smoking material is a major cause of fires and deaths from fire in the home.

Also you can purchase dedicated cigarette smoke alarm which would indicate the standard smoke alarm is not very effective with cigarette smoke. http://www.hoyles.com/acatalog/csa_gdve.pdf

[Dragonmaster]

I've also seen a detector that gives a pre-warning that cigarette smoke has enetered the detector before the system goes into full alarm. Unfortunately I cannot remember the manufacturers details (old age I suspect).

[Wiz]

Cigarette smoke operating automatic smoke detectors was a problem about 25 years ago. I can remember it happening regularly in 'smoking rooms' in Elderly Persons Homes. Over the years the detector manufacturers purposely designed the detectors to be less responisive to cigarette smoke and these days it would be difficult to get one to operate to a burning cigarette held under the detector.

[Mushy]

Thanks all

[TickityBoo]

While cigarette smoke is usually not a trigger, pipe and cigar smoke has been known to set off smokeys - just been to a premises where this happened with a multi sensor detector (the smoke sensor has since been made less sensitive to reduce false alarms)

[Galeon]

I can confirm seeing certain contractors who have run out of test aerosol , use the coffin nails to trigger a device.
Super king size seem to work better .

[afterburner]

Smoking regularly sets off automatic detectors in some locations in certain premises I look after. However, as the contribution regarding pipe and cigar smoke points out some smoking materials will create smoke particles which register faster on automatic detectors, and I am left wondering what the actual smoking materials were after some incidents.

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