Don't people realise that smoke detectors are life savers?

[Nightowl]

I've just tested the smoke detectors at both flats... one had the battery removed and the other was disconnected.

What's the MATTER with people... aren't smoke detectors common in the EU or something? I know most people in the UK do appreciate the importance of them but I'm surprised that we do sometimes receive calls saying 'there's an alarm going off'. We say, ARe you cooking? Is it burning? (yes). Well that will be the smoke detector.

Surprise at the other end of the phone...Don't they have them in France/Spain etc?

Do people seriously not realise they are a life saver and that batteries must NEVER be taken our or disconnected. It annoys me so much!!!!

My friend told me of a local house fire recently where a young mother died.. not much damage to the house, it was the smoke that killed her. No idea if she had a smoke detector or not

[Moliere]

Well they can be incredibly disorienting - they swamp your mind and you just can't think - I've ripped the battery out of ours on a number of occasions as the only way to shut the bloody thing up.

Mind you, I put it back later, so I think your guests could have done the same.

(We don't have one in our rental property - the pool alarm does a similar job of driving everyone mad!)

Moliere

[Hells Bells]

Our apartments were built without smoke detectors, I think the law may have changed now.

[la vache!]

Smoke detectors will be obligatory from March 2015. There are more important laws to be passed first, like carrying a breathalyser test in your car and de-activating the speed camera notifications in your GPS

[Tizfata]

Here in Italy is something exotic... Actually, I understand its importance if the whole house is build with wood. Arsons here are quite rare as 100% of homes are stone or cement...
(But we have floods and or earthquakes, so....)

[Normandie]

Ours are wired into the main electrical circuit with battery backup. I've always been under the impression that the backup batteries (in case of an outage) are rechargeable.

They're not, they're ordinary batteries - as guests explained to me yesterday when their sleep was disturbed at 1am by the bedroom battery signalling the end of its life.

So if any of you don't customarily change your alarm batteries at the beginning of each season, could I suggest (from experience) that you do so.

Slightly OT but related, so I thought I'd pass on the thought... still

[harcourtv57]

THey do beep when batteries are low and we have had guests who have removed the batteries when it does this but not told us. I think that if you are doing renovations now hard wired smoke alarms are mandatory?

[Nemo]

One property of ours has ordinary batteries in and the other newly renovated is hard wired (that is the law now). At home we are hard wired and I think it depends on the model as to whether you have an ordinary battery or a special long life one. Ours purports to have a 10 year life.

Unfortunately, s***ds law says the ordinary batteries give the battery warning beep at night and not during the day. I believe the reason is due to the lower air temperature at night and so the battery is colder. When a guest is faced with losing a nights sleep when on holiday because of the beeps, then you can understand why they disconnect them. Sadly it then seems they do not remember or cannot be bothered to alert you.

I did have one guest who replaced them for me and told me after. Very kind of her. I remember a suggestion that you change them once a year when the clocks change, so that you have a memory jog at that time.

[DaveN]

We review our fire safety assessment each Feb (isn't that a legal requirement in the UK too? - well annually I mean) and change the alarm batteries at the same time.

A dymo label on the battery saying 'replace Feb 2013' (for this year) acts as a safegaurd against fading memory. I also test the alarms each time I'm there (about once a month).
Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't know how I'd live with myself if guests died in a fire, especially if I didn't know that I'd done everything I could to prevent it.

Short of checking at every changeover, I'm not sure what else can be done, but I'd be equally annoyed if someone removed or disconnected the batteries.

[greenbarn]

Probably time to post this link to essential reading again!

[DaveN]

That's what I was alluding to, but I see that it requires 'regular' reviews rather specifying that they should annual.

In any event, we have a list of jobs we do each year (get the boiler serviced, chimney swept...) so smoke alarm batteries and fire safety assessment are part if the list.

[Yorkshire Lass]

Cottages4U have not been getting much love here lately but when I first appointed them as my agency they gave me a log for us/our cleaner to complete at every changeover indicating we had checked the smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detector and I had to sign to confirm that this would be actioned. This doesn't take long and has been a good discipline for us.

[Nemo]

A dymo label on the battery saying 'replace Feb 2013' (for this year) acts as a safegaurd against fading memory.

Think I might go with that one, although I think it needs to be stuck on the actual detector for me! That's the same as the PAT testing effectively, where every electrical item has a lable stuck on with a date reminder.

I don't have regular enough access, so it's something I have to ask my cleaner to do for me.

my agency gave me a log for us/our cleaner to complete at every changeover indicating we had checked the smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detector and I had to sign to confirm that this would be actioned. This doesn't take long and has been a good discipline for us.

How do you they reach them? I wouldn't want my cleaner standing perilously on a chair and the property has nowhere to store a stepladder, so that is outside in a store. I'm thinking maybe a pole of some sort could be used?

[Yorkshire Lass]

Broom/mop handle works for us

[greenbarn]

Broom/mop handle works for us

I trust it's calibrated against the approved standard.......