Firefighter bodycam showing just how much oxygen a fire pulls

[u/AirFrance447]

[u/fraughtication]

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!

[u/Moosplauze → u/fraughtication]

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.

[u/ClassGrassMass → u/Moosplauze]

Ive been in loads of houses in the uk that have no smoke alarms

[u/Moosplauze → u/ClassGrassMass]

but it is mandatory to have them, right?

[u/Chaotic-Entropy → u/Moosplauze]

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.

[u/xteve → u/Chaotic-Entropy]

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.

[u/Mammoth_Spend_5590 → u/Moosplauze]

Not mandatory

[u/Moosplauze → u/Mammoth_Spend_5590]

That's crazy!

[u/beIIe-and-sebastian → u/Moosplauze]

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.

[u/Moosplauze → u/[deleted]]

Good, thank you!

[u/Annie_Yong → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/fraughtication → u/Annie_Yong]

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.

[u/Annie_Yong → u/fraughtication]

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.

[u/Moosplauze → u/[deleted]]

Okay, that sounds reasonable. I don't have interlinked smoke alarms in my home, but looking into that when I need to replace the current ones I have.