Big E set off my smoke alarm last night...

[flamegrabber]

Hi Folks,

My smoke alarm went off last night and I'm not sure why.

When I first got my Big E and used it there was a smell that turned out to be just the paint curing from the heat and that has since gone away.

I've never really had the stove set above 3 for more than 20 minutes before last night.

So last night I ran it on #4 for about an hour and the smoke alarm started to intermittently beep. I know the batteries are ok. It wasn't the low battery indicator on the smoke alarm.

Now this happened just about the same time my wife was taking dinner out of the oven. There wasn't any smoke smell at all coming from the kitchen but out in the living area, where it was very warm from the Big E running on #4 for a while there was a faint smell, didn't smell like smoke, smelled more like something was hot.

I set the stove back to #3 and the alarm stopped coming on.

Could this be from the stove never reaching that temp before and thus the stove paint started curing again after it stopped a couple of months ago?

Again, didn't smell like wood smoke at all but did smell like something was heating up, know what I mean?

When the paint cured on setting #3 two months ago it never set off the smoke alarm.

Thanks a lot for any help. I'm trying to find out why this is happening.

FG.

 

[bungalobob]

When I cured my stove a couple months ago, it set off the smoke alarms. They are electric and would not shut down till I turned the stove down and opened the windows. Had the same smells you mentioned. A week later I cranked the stove up all the way again, and the smells came, and then the alarms went off. I opened the windows and let it burn away. The smells calmed down after a while and alarms finally went off. It never has set the alarms off again since then, but I have only cranked it up once or twice since. Try and crank yours up to max, open some windows open to let out the smells and give it a good cure. If the alarms go off you know it was the stove and not the wife's cooking. Worse that happens is you waste some pellets heating the great outdoors and maybe your neighbors hear the alarm for a while. Good luck.

 

[flamegrabber]

Thanks a lot Bob.

It wasn't a wood smoke I smelled, it was that "hot" smell, and it sounds like you've been through the same thing.

I'm was hopeing it was that the paint had to be taken all the way up through the temps to cure 100%, and that after 2 months running on setting #3 it resumed that last night when I cranked it up to setting #4. It was really throwing off alot of heat.

Really eats the pellets on that setting too.

I know what I'll be doing tonight.

Thanks again,

FG.

When I cured my stove a couple months ago, it set off the smoke alarms. They are electric and would not shut down till I turned the stove down and opened the windows. Had the same smells you mentioned. A week later I cranked the stove up all the way again, and the smells came, and then the alarms went off. I opened the windows and let it burn away. The smells calmed down after a while and alarms finally went off. It never has set the alarms off again since then, but I have only cranked it up once or twice since. Try and crank yours up to max, open some windows open to let out the smells and give it a good cure. If the alarms go off you know it was the stove and not the wife's cooking. Worse that happens is you waste some pellets heating the great outdoors and maybe your neighbors hear the alarm for a while. Good luck.

 

[MCPO]

What happened is normal with most stove .
It will cure only to a point depending on how hot you ran it for a period of time.
Months later if you run it hotter than previously you will get that hot chemical smell again.

 

[ronlat]

Smoke alerms generally have only one fast beep speed if it indicates smoke. Does the smoke detector also contain a CO monitor. Also check the sensor, many time a smoke detector has a sensor that requires changing, and a slow beep can mean battery low or sensor being used up.

 

[flamegrabber]

Yeah it was not a steady or consistent beep, and it wasn't the battery low beep either because I've heard that one several times. That one is a chirp every 60 seconds or so.

And it stopped when I dialed the stove back down to setting #3.

The same detector sounded off as you'd normally expect this past XMAS when my wife left an oven mitt on a stove burner. Man did that ever stink. All the built up grease and crap on the mitt just turned into smoke. Filled the house.

But this time it was going off in a way that I interpreted as smoke detection but not like the oven mitt incident. It was more like it was detecting a very small amount of something and we didn't smell any smoke smell, just like a heat smell. Something was hot and giving off some kind of hot odor/gas.

It doesn't have a CO monitor built in, but I have 2 seperate CO monitors and I checked them. They detected zero CO and had not accumlated any detections ( I checked that status too ) since I turned them on last, 2.5 months ago. Accumlated CO detection was 0, zero.

Thanks Ron. Replacing the detectors does sound like a good idea regardless. I think I'll do that anyway.

FG.

Smoke alerms generally have only one fast beep speed if it indicates smoke. Does the smoke detector also contain a CO monitor. Also check the sensor, many time a smoke detector has a sensor that requires changing, and a slow beep can mean battery low or sensor being used up.