Does the smoke alarm cause sensory problems in your house?

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I know that every home must have a smoke alarm due to health and safety, but the only thing is, I find it goes against my sensory issues. I despise loud sudden noises, even if I know they're coming, because I still jump, and I hate jumping.

The smoke alarm is very sensitive, so any little bit of smoke from the oven, and it goes off. The other day my mum opened the oven to get garlic bread out, and we didn't see or smell any smoke, but as soon as the oven opened, the smoke alarm went off, even though nothing was burning. So now whatever's in the oven, I won't ever trust the smoke alarm again, so now I have to put earplugs in my ears when I go under it if the oven is being in use.

I did ask if we could get a special smoke alarm that can detect the difference between smoke from food cooking and smoke from a real fire, but nobody in my house thinks there's no such thing.

How do you live with a smoke alarm in your house? Does it cause problems for you too?

Smoke is smoke, there is no way to tell the diff between a legit fire and burned food, because burned food is fire.

I would suggest moving the smoke detector away from the stove. My mom also sometimes will disable hers while cooking, but it's important to re-enable it and not to leave the room.

You might not like it, but it's truly one of those things that the annoyance of the loud noise is much better than being pulled out of a burning building, half dead, poked and prodded but medics, thrown in a helicopter, flown to shock trauma and stuck in a hyperbaric chamber to force the carbon monoxide out of your body, which I'm told is not painless.

Yes, I hate it and I never thought that at 24 I would still react to it so badly. As a small child I was really phobic of it, I suspect it was one of the big reasons why I started to refuse to go to school. I used to dread thursdays because I was convinced that was when the fire alarm would go off, I was also really phobic of fire and would go into complete meltdowns over it. As an adult it's still a problem, I live in a supported home and they will find me a few minutes before they test it to prewarn me because I get so freaked out by it. The first time they tested it they didn't warn me and I ending up screaming because the doors automatically shut and I almost got hit by the door. That plus the sound was too much. A couple of weeks ago they had to do a formal test and go round and set each off individually. It went on forever and took about an hour in total. I had to go outside into the cold and wait for them to finish because I had got pretty worked up by it. I find it embarrasing because it's only been the last year that we finally got a name for why I do the things I do so I have spent a lifetime being thought of as truly odd that I still panic with these things. I've also spent significant periods in psychiatric hospitals and the panic alarms also produce the same effect.

We currently don't have smoke detectors in my home. The landlord said he'd put them up when we moved in and never did.

In our old place when I was a kid the smoke detector went off so often we took the batteries out and didn't have one for many years. Back then it had a really loud and constant noise that would scare me and I'd have to run and hide with my hands over my ears until someone climbed up on a chair and took the battery out. Many years later the landlord put newer ones in and while they are annoying they aren't quite as bad and have a button to push to shut them off instead of having to take the cover off and take the battery out.

It's always been extraordinarily irritating. But, you know what's worse than the alarm? The high pitched noise that goes off when the battery is low! I tore apart my house looking for its source, when that happened a few months ago!!

I'm 39 and smoke alarms drive me nuts especially when one has been going for 14 hours in a vacant unit in the set of units I'm in and noone does anything about it.

all the ones in this house have the batteries removed, but they're still on the ceiling -- "for looks" in case anyone checks.

In a similar but unrelated note, the doorbell has also been deactivated. Same reason. As long as I'm in charge of that decision, that's how it'll be.

I have problems with the fire alarms at my university in the math sciences building they are too loud.

I don't particularly like the sound of it however i try not to let it bother me.

I can't stand it at all. It's probably the worst sound I know. The loud, sharp noise drives me crazy.

Additionally I have always been afraid/intrigued by fire. I used to have nightmares when I was a kid, I still have them sometimes. Every smoke alarm, everything that sounds like a smoke alarms makes me instantly frightened.

Same here! Mine goes off whenever I burn something in the oven even slightly. Not only does it give me a jolt of panicky fear that quickens my heartbeat, but it also induces a terrible headache for the rest of the day.
I hate fire alarms. I really do.

Yeah. I have kept mine off lol. I know that is a fire hazard. They used to scare me as a kid also.

I'm pretty sure smoke alarms are designed specifically to cause sensory issues . Their sole purpose is to make you want to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible!

I can't stand the sound of fire alarms. If one goes off my hands immediately raise to cover my ears while getting as far away possible from the noise.

There has to be a visual smoke alarm for deaf people out there somewhere. It's probably a big flashing strobe light, because the point is that you can't ignore it, but if your auditory sensitivity is so bad that you'd freeze up if there were a fire, it might well be a safety issue for you.

If you do lose your ability to think rationally when the smoke alarm goes off, make sure you have a plan in mind beforehand, a way to escape your house from any room. Also make sure you have designated someone to help you get out, in case you aren't thinking straight and end up curled in the corner with your hands over your ears mid-meltdown.

Removing the smoke alarm is not recommended. Better to have a few meltdowns than end up crispy-fried.

Yea, I keep it there. And try my best not to set it off. But I used to live in a large student complex ( 160+ ) apartments. Each of them with a fire alarm that can easily go off. The alarm would go off several times a month and my initial reaction was: "Get out, get out, get out." Both because of the possible, though improbable, fire. And the fact that this fire alarm made a high pitched continuous tone. And this fire alarm in particular is worse than anything I have ever heard. I could hear the alarm starting from probably 5-10 apartments down the hall, and I usually couldn't hear anything that was going on inside the other apartments. So yeah, it was a nice place, but I hated that fire alarm. =P