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I'm amazed that everyone is claiming the alarms are installed improperly. Aren't most of you in big cities in small apartments like me? The alarm is going off if anything happens when you live < 800 sq ft.

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I live in a smallish apt, maybe 350 ft^2, and my smoke alarms never go off, even when I burn something on the stove...

The fact that you're legitimately burning something and you smoke alarm doesn't go off is more of an indication that your smoke alarm is ineffectual than anything else.

That's not clear at all. The smoke from some toast burning and the smoke from your kitchen being on fire aren't necessarily the same in amount/duration/composition/distribution. Obviously an ideal detector would take such things into account and reject false positives.

I do not know the degree to which this is possible in practice, but certainly it's been true basically every place I've lived that the smoke detectors very rarely reacted to "typical food burning incidents."

I live in a tiny apartment. I have two detectors in my flat. I have another just outside the door. They're all tested twice yearly by contractors (and the fire extinguisher is checked).

I've never set them off by cooking, even with occasional accidents of food burning.

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