SMOKE ALARMS

Smoke Alarms

NEW LAW – SMOKE DETECTORS MUST BE INSTALLED IN YOUR HOUSE (BUILDING / RENOVATING)

The new nationwide regulations state that if you are building or renovating a home, smoke detectors must be installed.

Battery ones are permissible so long as they have a “hush feature” which many of them don’t.

A recent letter to the editor pointed out the silly-ness of allowing battery ones, aprticulary for tenants. Who enforces the level of charge in the battery? That is, you could have them with no batteries in, who would know?

The smoke detectors can be installed in bedrooms or within three meters of each bedroom, and must also be installed in exit routes that may become blocked by fire and prevent escape. This would be stairways and passages. They must also be produce 60db of noise to the bedroom if installed outside the bedroom and the bedroom door is enclosed.

Until recently I had six 9 volt battery smoke detectors in my house. I recently replaced them with six hard wired smoke detectors. People thought I was mad putting in six, but my family is important to me. A fire could start in any room, not just the kitchen! It is a case of priority. Also, the internal sirens will sound which is way higher than the beeping/squawking of a $9.95 detector.

Another reason I changed mine is that the other ones would chirp at 2.00 am to say they are going flat, not 2.00 pm, but 2.00 am! Also, if you go on holiday, how do you know the batteries are o.k. when you return? Checking them at daylight savings time as recommended is not really good enough.

It is now comforting to know that I will never need to change the batteries in them, and it is also good to know that they are fully supervised. If anything goes wrong with them the alarm keypad will indicate the problem. Further, the problem will be communicated to the monitoring firm who monitoring your alarm if you elected this option with your alarm.

SUMMARY

Irrespective of this new regulation, irrespective of whether or not you are renovating or building, get good quality smoke detectors in. The “cheapy” fire detectors at $9.95 are just that. Cheap.

Please contact me if you have any queries in relation to this matter and if you would like a no obligation quote to get your house sorted.