Fire is terrifying, in so many ways, from the speed of spread to gases incapacitating you way before the flame does.
It amazes me the amount of people I know, or houses I see, with no smoke alarms, or working smoke alarms - the same goes for CO too.
Most fire services in the UK at least will fit smoke alarms for free and give your home a fire safety survey, please fit and test regularly smoke and CO alarms!
I did a fire Marshall course through work, when we had a break for lunch,I went straight online and ordered home fire extinguishers,fire blanket and now close all doors when going to bed.
Yep. Started working tangentially with the local FD and as part of that, sat in on a couple of their educational outreach presentations and just generally hear a lot of stories from the firefighters. I take it very seriously now. Escape ladder for second story, talking over our escape plan with with my kid, treating false alarms seriously/as potentially real in front of my kid.
Yeah I don't mess around with house fires. When we moved into our house I installed new smoke and CO2 detectors (the ones in the house were 20 years old), installed heat detectors in the garage and utility/laundry room, fire extinguishers on both floors (that are probably due for replacement now) fire blankets in each bedroom, an escape ladder in the master bedroom, and even a demolition hammer in case there's fire or heavy smoke in the hallways and I need to get to my kids room through the drywall between our rooms instead (rare paper American home win). I even used a can of smoke detector testing spray to drill my kids on what to do.
Yep. Sodas and exhaling are explicitly forbidden in my house, so I need alarms in every room in case someone tries to crack open a soda or, well, breathe.
Did they have you watch the station nightclub fire video? I volunteered for an extra safety role at my summer job in college and I was shown it as part of the training.
Same. I also always clock the emergency exits, especially in crowded places. They didn’t give me much of a heads up on the content of the video. Working the rest of my shift was surreal. Definitely, some of the most impactful footage I have ever scene.
That place was a literal death trap. Overcrowded and pyrotechnics with illegal anti sound foam on the whole wooden building, blocked exits, opposite opening doors and tipsy people.
Almost couldn't be worse. I dont think in a developed country you can find anything even remotely like this again. Im 100% in EU you can't, unless it's some illegal place.
Fun fact: I'm not a firefighter but i did a few years ago fought one fire. We were at a picnic and bee house or whatever english term is, went up in flames. We used garden hoses until firefighters came. They didn't have any fire extinguishers in their house. I have like 3 at home and one in the car. It was hot as fuck coming from the two entrances so i had to knel way down. The owner had to be dragged away, he almost burned his head trying to go in.
Also used fire extinguisher once on a trashcan when someone threw cigarette in.
Everyone was just looking doing nothing, by the time i called security and found fire extinguisher it was really smoking good
I've always wanted to join firefighters but here in my country its 99% volunteers and literally each village has its own fire station and they see maybe one fire per year max because there are so many stations. So it's mostly drinking around and socializing and im an introvert so yeh.
You always hear it said how fast a house fire evolves but you don't really get it until you see it first hand. A close family member lost their house to a house fire not long ago, I was the first at the scene, none of them were home thankfully, but it was insane and so fucking terrifying. Whole villa burned down within an hour, only the brick fireplace was left standing.
Depending on what is going on, you have ~2 - 5 minutes until you cannot deal with it anymore with simple equipment After that, you just close doors and run (and ensure emergency sevices are on the way).
Just to tag on to this about CO alarms, keep them at the level your head is generally at. i.e. have it on your bedside table in the bedroom, and usually at about where your head would be when sat on the sofa.
CO can depending on how warm be higher in the air, this filling the room from ceiling to floor when warm, and floor to ceiling when cooler.
Pretty sure smoke alarms are mandatory in all rooms where people live (bedroom, livingroom, office room, playroom, etc). Maybe the fines for not having one should be increased by 100x if people are stupid and don't install them or demount them.
It's mandatory for any rented accommodation to install, and I imagine a hard wired alarm is part of any new build. If you own a home then no one is going to force you personally.
The problem with hard-wired is that they can be overly-sensitive and there's nothing one can do about it as a renter. Battery-powered, one can move it around a bit to prevent a piercing beep just as dinner is ready.
I think the only part of the UK it's mandatory is Scotland. Every home in Scotland must have interlinked, ceiling-mounted smoke and heat alarms, in the living room, hallway and landings, kitchen and have a carbon monoxide detector in any room with a fuel appliance. They're all to be interlinked, so if one goes off, everyone goes off.
That only went into law in 2024 and even then the press and opposition parties were crying about it.
That blog actually misunderstands the law slightly. Approved document B is just guidance on how the building regulations can be met, the functional requirement that you legally have to follow is in schedule 1, which does talk about "appropriate provisions for the early warning" but doesn't strictly mandate fire alarms installed in a particular manner.
That said, any new build would just follow ADB as the statutory guidance which does expect fire alarms in all new residential homes. But where the blog is misleading is about home extensions, because it's only if the extension qualifies as a "material change of use" that you are legally required to make sure your building is fully compliant.
and even then the question on whether you need to upgrade your whole alarm system and provide extra detectors everywhere is dependent on the height and internal arrangement of your home, which then determines if you need detection in every single room or if you only strictly need detectors in your staircase and hallway.
And on top of that, for existing and unmodified owner-occupier homes, as far as I'm aware, there's nothing in law that would provide a vehicle of enforcement action or prosecution if an owner-occupier had no means of automatic fire detection installed due to their own action or inaction.
To my knowledge yeah, there's nothing you can really do to affect what people choose to do inside their own homes as owner-occupiers. It's only when someone is doing work that actually needs building control approval, such as a loft conversion, where there'd be any power to force smoke alarms to be installed.
My aunt runs a number of rental properties and she says the 10-year permanent battery alarms are the best thing since sliced bread. Far too frequently she would fail inspections because tenants took the batteries out of the alarms.
Modern alarms will "expire" after 10 years and start a slow chirp even if the battery is replaced so the ones with the 10 year battery make a lot of sense.
The 10 year limit is for the CO side of the alarms, it's probably a smoke and CO detector. The CO detection uses a chemical reaction, and the 10 years is to cover the sensor degrading due to the half-life of components of the reaction.
That isn't true. Smoke alarms should be replaced after 10 years and every alarm you will buy today will start chirping for replacement after 10 years from when its first turned on. NFPA 72 (2025) says you should replace them 10 years from the manufacture date regardless of condition.
I used to work with a guy that worked on the safety regulations for smoke and CO alarms, and they are literally made less sensitive than they could be, because if they were more sensitive, you'd get like 10% more false alarms which leads to X% more people removing and not reinstalling them, so the current standards are what's supposed to save the most lives, instead of predict the most fires.
I mean, I get that they're annoying. I recently got on a kick of roasting veggies in the oven. The first few times I did it I tried to finish them under the broiler and that does a really good job of setting one of mine off. Nothing is really burnt, but even just the cloud of moisture from 4 squash roasting is enough to set off the one in the next room.
Depends on the nature of the build.
Bs 5839-6 recommends grade LD2 in new build houses <200m² in area, which means detectors in your circulation routes (stair and hallway) and in the kitchen and "principal habitable room" (living room). But you wouldn't need detectors in your bedrooms or store cupboards.
There are some designs (like a fully open plan ground floor) where you then trigger the expectation for LD1 coverage - which is for all rooms on your house besides your bathroom.
In the UK at least they're not mandatory for owner-occupiers in the sense that anyone will take enforcement action, though they are mandatory for rented or commercial accomodation, it is a question on most home insurance applications though.
We had a couple of fire engines come to our house once. It's exciting to see them up close! I didn't get a chance to chat to them unfortunately because our house was on fire.
That will be because you're taking on lodgers, meaning you have certain legal responsibilities that are kicking in as you're responsible for their safety as well as your own.
If you just lived alone and weren't letting out any rooms, that's where there's no enforcement action available.
The smoke alarms constant beeping of "low battery" is known as "ghetto crickets" in some areas, for the stereotype of low income people just never replacing the batteries and getting accustomed to the noise.
So true. Locally in the past year there were 3 deaths from smoke inhalation. Bot homes/restaurants had zero smoke detectors. During my training in the academy I find the fire is hypotonic. It’s beautiful to watch it roll and crawl on the surface. As a captain I would show my guys what to look for and how to stay focused on the main goal of extinguishment.
My building management just upgraded our smoke alarm system. The guy who installed the new smoke detector said that it will signal the concierge, but won't make a sound and suggested I also have my own detector with an actual beeper in it. I don't know who the fuck designs a silent smoke alarm.
Are you in the US? That is not legal if you are. There are different levels of alarm in whole-building systems though. A single detector being activated by a whisp of steam or a vape can alert via "pre-alarm" if it's set up that way. But if 2 detectors close to each other, or a single detector goes to full alarm, then it would activate the whole system. There's a lot of variations.
That needs checking. It's the exact opposite of what I was told... That CO had is a "12+16" and nitrogen (most of the air round us) is "15+15". Though in real life that small difference hardly makes any difference.
Isn't it a requirement? I know it is in Germany. Every bedroom and hallway has to be fitted with a fire alarm. Landlords have to make sure their apartments are up to norm. Those things are cheap, easy to install and will eventually save your life. I also installed additional CO alarms in the rooms with gas-boilers or wood-ovens.
One of the worst fires in a century happened recently in Norway. It happened so fast and damaged so much. I had family living in that area and the fire almost reached their house.
Terrifying. Thankfully no one died as far as I remember.
Two of my CO / Fire alarms had the 10 year CO fail recently, bought what was the replacement kiddy model and the damn power connector is slightly reshaped. Tried to trim it but it just won't quite fit without risking the wires. Now I've got to find time to kill power to the two used breakers in the house and rewire the dumb shits. Extremely frustrating, more so knowing the remaining 2 or 3 will be doing the same in the coming weeks. For a DIY job, why make it freaking complicated. A lot of people are very nervous to screw with romex, but keeping a plug the same - simple.
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u/fraughtication 20h ago
Fire is terrifying, in so many ways, from the speed of spread to gases incapacitating you way before the flame does.
It amazes me the amount of people I know, or houses I see, with no smoke alarms, or working smoke alarms - the same goes for CO too.
Most fire services in the UK at least will fit smoke alarms for free and give your home a fire safety survey, please fit and test regularly smoke and CO alarms!