What the job involves
A smoke and heat alarm system is a set of alarms wired to the mains with a battery backup, interlinked so that when one sounds they all sound. Smoke alarms go where fires are detected early: hallways, landings and living rooms. Heat alarms go in the kitchen and the garage, where cooking fumes or exhaust would set a smoke alarm off every week. Many houses also need a carbon monoxide alarm wherever there is a gas boiler, a gas fire or a wood burner.
The British Standard that covers domestic fire detection, BS 5839-6, sets out grades and categories. For an ordinary house, a mains-powered system with battery backup on every storey and in the kitchen is the standard, and it is what a rewire or a new consumer unit will be expected to include. Rented houses, HMOs and guest houses are often required by their licence to go further, with alarms in every bedroom and sometimes a control panel. We fit to whatever grade your property needs and say so on the certificate.
What we do on the day
We plan the positions first. Alarms go on ceilings, away from corners, light fittings and extractor fans, and not too close to a bathroom door where steam sets them off. Then we run the circuit. Mains alarms are normally fed from the lighting circuit of the floor they are on, so that if the circuit fails you notice because the lights go off too, and a three-core cable links the alarms together. In lofts and on landings that is usually a clean job; in a finished house with solid ceilings we may use mains alarms with a wireless interlink to avoid chasing cables through decorated rooms.
Each alarm is fitted on its base, connected and tested, first with the test button, then with a smoke test and a heat test to prove every head and every link. We show you how to test them and silence a false alarm. You receive a Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificate where the alarms are added to an existing circuit, or an Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC) where they are part of a new circuit, together with a note of the grade and category of the system and the replacement date of the heads. New circuits are notifiable under Part P of the Building Regulations and are registered with building control through NICEIC.
What it costs
Three interlinked mains alarms, typically a smoke alarm in the hall, one on the landing and a heat alarm in the kitchen, are £295 including VAT. Each additional alarm is priced per unit, and a wireless interlink costs a little more than a cabled one. The price drops when we fit the alarms during an EICR, a consumer unit change or a rewire, because we are already in the loft with the covers off. Landlords can have an alarm check added to an EICR for £165 all in.
Who needs them and when
Every home benefits, and some homes are required. If you are a private landlord in England you must have a working smoke alarm on each storey where someone lives and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed fuel-burning appliance, and the council can fine you for not having them. HMO licences in Blackpool and Wyre specify an interlinked system and often alarms in every letting room. Guest houses providing sleeping accommodation fall under fire safety law and need a fire risk assessment, which almost always calls for a proper detection system. If you are having a rewire or an extension, building regulations expect interlinked mains alarms as part of the work.
For owner-occupiers, the common triggers are a new baby, an elderly relative moving in, a loft conversion, or finding that the landing alarm has a date on the back from 2009. Alarms are a ten-year item. Older than that, the sensor is no longer reliable.
Alarms across the Fylde
Blackpool’s guest houses and HMOs make up a large share of our alarm work. A four-storey guest house behind the Promenade can need fifteen or twenty alarms, sometimes with a panel in the hallway, and the fire risk assessor’s report tells us the grade. Landlords with flats in converted houses in Fleetwood and St Annes often need alarms in the common stairway as well as in each flat.
In the 1930s semis of Poulton and the bungalows of Cleveleys, the job is simpler: three or four alarms, cabled through the loft, done in a morning. The one thing the coast adds is damp. Alarm heads near a leaky roof or above a steamy kitchen on a cold external wall fail early, and we site them with that in mind.
