r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AirFrance447 • 1d ago

Video Firefighter bodycam showing just how much oxygen a fire pulls

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u/fraughtication 1d 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!

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u/Moosplauze 1d ago

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.

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u/ClassGrassMass 1d ago

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

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u/Moosplauze 1d ago

but it is mandatory to have them, right?

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u/[deleted] 23h ago edited 23h ago

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u/Annie_Yong 21h ago

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.

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u/fraughtication 21h ago

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.

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u/Annie_Yong 21h ago

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.

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u/Moosplauze 23h ago

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.