Can using your vape inside of your home set your smoke alarm off? Yes, but it might not actually happen. Not all smoke alarms are made the same and the different designs determine the odds of them being set off by vapor. To better understand how you can avoid setting off your smoke alarm with your vapor, it’s best to understand how smoke alarms actually detect smoke (and potentially vapor).
How Smoke Alarms Detect Vapor
The three main types of modern smoke detectors that are used today are optical detectors, ionization detectors, and heat detectors. Depending on which one you have in your home, you might not actually have to worry too much about setting it off with your vape.
Heat
Smoke detectors that are set off by rising temperatures, known as heat detectors, might be the least likely to actually detect vapor and sound the alarm. So if this is what you have in your home then you might not need to worry about setting it off while you vape.
Photoelectric
Ones that use infrared light to detect smoke particles, which are known as photoelectric alarms, are much more likely to detect vapor particles so if you happen to have one of these optical smoke detectors then you may want to exercise caution when you vape around it because there’s definitely a chance that the vapor will disrupt the infrared beam of light inside of it and set off the smoke alarm.
Ionization
One of the most common types of smoke detection devices used today is the ionization smoke alarm. This type of smoke detector uses a couple of charged plates to produce negatively and positively charged ions that constantly flow; when the flow is disrupted, the alarm is triggered. Relative to the other two common types of smoke detectors used today, ones that rely on ionization are fairly likely to detect vapor. If you have one of these, be extra careful vaping around it because you may set it off.
How To Vape Without Setting Off The Smoke Alarm
Now that you understand how smoke detectors (or should I say “vape detectors?”) work, you should have a good idea of how the following tips can help you avoid triggering a smoke detector with your vapor.
Here are my tips for vaping inside without setting off a smoke alarm:
- Use an e-juice with more propylene glycol (PG) than vegetable glycerin (PG) because it should result in less vapor, which decreases the odds of your smoke detector picking up on the vapor and sounding its alarm. You can actually find some “vaporless” e-juices on the market that are pretty much exactly this (vape juices with a lot more PG than VG).
- Keeping the air circulating and having some sort of ventilation in the room will help disperse the vapor that you exhale, which can help you avoid detection.
- You can use a personal smoke filter like the Smoke Buddy or Smoke Buddy Jr to filter the vapor you exhale. This should greatly reduce the odds of your smoke detector noticing your vapor.
- Increase the airflow on your vape by adjusting the airflow setting if your vape has this feature. This will help reduce the density of the vapor that your device is producing.
- Lower the voltage/wattage if you have the ability to do so with your vaping device because this, just like increasing the airflow, will act to diminish the amount of vapor that your device is producing. Lighter puffs of vapor will dissipate faster than dense clouds.
- Use an air purifier like the Coway Airmega to actively filter vapor out of the air while you vape. Air purifiers like the Airmega are considerably more expensive and much larger than personal air filters like the Smoke Buddy but they do an outstanding job of actively filtering vapor (and anything else that might be in the air inside your home). If you really don’t want to set off your smoke alarm, you can blow your vapor directly into your air purifier. Based on my own testing, this trick works marvelously.
Conclusion
Smoke detectors can detect vapor from e-cigs. It should go without saying but I’ll say it anyways: don’t disconnect or remove the batteries from your smoke detector so you can vape inside because properly installed and maintained smoke detectors are one of the best ways to avoid dying from a fire in your own home.
While there are a lot of ways to avoid setting off a smoke alarm with your vapor, I don’t recommend stealth vaping anywhere that you’re not supposed to. But if you’re in your own home and your sole concern is accidentally setting off one of your smoke alarms with your vapor then by all means consider using the tips I’ve outlined above.
