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Given I would hear a smoke detector anywhere in the house, is there an advantage in buying (expensive) connected ones?

Do you plan to grow old in this house?  Do you expect to have elderly relatives spend much time there in the future?  Hearing doesn’t tend to improve with age.

Ones connected by mains wiring have better battery life as it’s only used for power outage backup.  Less hassle changing batteries.

Probably but that's a while yet, and I've got plenty of relatives

It would have been wise to add wiring when everything was done...but I'm not rebuilding the house again.

We got a free one the fire brigade fitted, battery has lasted a few years now and it is still working.  Seems good enough to me.

£25 per sensor, wireless interlinked, 10 year battery life.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09VY25KD8/

How much are the ones you are looking at?

Hmm, thanks. I was in B&Q, where £280 was the cheapest to satisfy SNP nanny state requirements. £30 for 2 normal ones.

Yup, Fire Service community safety team will do one for you, think they say 10 year life span but 5 is probably closer to the truth 

I've had my ordinary cheapo smoke detectors for 10 years and I check them with both the test button and with some smoke at least once a year and they work fine. But I live in a 2 story small mid terrace downstairs is open plan.

If it was a big 3 story house with a garage on the side and a fire rated doors you might not hear a garage detector going off from top floor bedroom so linked ones makes a lot of sense in some houses 

Depends how often burnt toast sets the alarm off...

I think the main benefit of having multiple smoke detectors in most or every room is not so you'll hear it wherever you are but that wherever the fire starts it will be picked by a detector very quickly giving you more time to get out and allowing the fire brigade to get there sooner and reduce the amount of damage caused by the fire.

If a fire starts in room with a closed door and without a detector, it will be well established before the smokes escapes and reaches the nearest detector, the chances are by the time the fire brigade arrives the whole house will be ablaze. Conversely, if there is a detector in that room it will pick it up straight away and you might even be able to put it out yourself.

Oh sure. It wasn't multiple detectors I was questioning, just linking them

When I turned 60 the fire brigade turned up and fitted one for us. Battery ran out recently and when I checked.....no battery. Sealed unit. After I spent a few weeks mulling over what to do the fire brigade turned up at the door and fitted a new one, completely unbidden.

After a fire in the kitchen the fire brigade fit us 2 smoke detectors, they were supposed to have a 10 year life, more like 5 to 6 years and like yours sealed units. They started beeping when the batteries were low.

I suppose sealed makes sense, stops people borrowing the battery for the TV remote. 

Why, are you a vulnerable person or has a vulnerable person lived in your house. Up thread MG mentions the SNP as a nanny state, for I assume legislating on Smoke Detectors, I am undecided on that.
But having the Fire Brigade going house to house fitting alarms for people just because they are 60 or over, does seem rather over the top to me, possibly job creation.

Annoyingly, battery life isn't the limiting factor - wired sensors also technically need replaced after 10 years due to sensor degradation...

(not that anyone will!)

Is your house really big? We stayed in a huge 5 bed detached house when we first moved to Aberdeenshire, I don't think we would have heard a smoke alarm from the other side of the house.

In Scotland it depends on whether you are a landlord or want to be able to sell your house.

A smoke detector might not even wake you up when you are sleeping, the evidence on this is quite sobering.

Blue Watch may as well do something useful during their shift if there are no fires raging currently.

I think fire services offer this to anyone if you ask them, along with a fire risk assessment of the property. Fitting a smoke alarm and handing out advice for free is a damn sight cheaper than putting out a full blown house fire. Sure, it’d be great if everyone did it/was able to do it themselves, but wishful thinking doesn’t prevent fires.

If the fire service just wanted to create more jobs for themselves, the last thing they would be doing is encouraging people to have working smoke detectors installed. 

Big but I think audible everywhere.  That said the cheaper options linked above are more reasonable.

Yes the legislation is a bit weird.  It is a law that decides whether a house is habitable - to be so it requires a tap, a toilet....and a state of the art fire detection system!

Hmm.

I was once woken by a fire woman hammering on the door.

She was quite surprised to find me still asleep, given that they had already put out the fire in the flat above and across the stairwell from mine, presumably making quite a lot of noise in the process.

Mind you, as I no take alcohol I would expect to be woken up much easier than I was that night.

but would it WAKE you anywhere in the house?  Even on that occasion where you've been up late drinking? (and might have left chips in the oven etc)

If your house is relatively good at keeping the smoke in one place (doors shut etc), it could take a long time between a downstairs alarm and an upstairs one going off, by which time you could have a much harder time getting out

I once startled the police cordon by walking out of a building where there had been a full-scale bomb scare and evacuation!  I had been missed, although there was no alarm as they thought the noise by trigger the bomb

I'm guessing yes but I see the risk,

Apparently children are especially bad (good?) at sleeping though smoke alarms.

I know I personally have done so as a teenager, when the alarm at my parents developed a fault and went off for no reason in the night. Rather freaked out my parents, as it was located on the landing directly outside my bedroom.

The most important thing is to check the alams regularly (I think they recommend weekly) and replace batteries as required - I always test them in rental properties and it's scary how often you find they have no working alarm.

What depends on those criteria? In Scotland you should by now have detectors in every home. The law came into effect on 1st Feb 2022, extract as follows:

What each home needs

Every home must have:

- one smoke alarm in the living room or the room you use most

- one smoke alarm in every hallway and landing

- one heat alarm in the kitchen

All smoke and heat alarms should be mounted on the ceiling and be interlinked.

To the OP, I used this company whose prices I thought were reasonable:

https://www.safelincs.co.uk/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwqoibBhDUARIsAH2OpWjLxPiMKDwMK_LV...

It's not that simple. See discussion here

https://twitter.com/andywightman/status/1483863505463873538?lang=en

Thanks!

I think Jon Greengrass' point was that a private house is only ever going to get checked by a third party (e.g. surveyor) when it comes on the market.  In fact, Mr Wightman says pretty much that in the last post on his twitter thread: In short, it is a good idea to have these fitted ... to avoid any issues arising in future over insurance or potential sale of a below tolerable standard dwelling.

Agree  - which is why I am looking!  But the point is nothing is actually going to happen if I (or anyone) doesn't install linked alarms, and they aren't doing anything illegal, which is the impression given by a lot of marketing bumpf.

Most people will also need Carbon Monoxide detectors.

The websites of some alarm suppliers can make you think you must have a CO detector for gas ovens & hobs but the Scottish government says..

"If you have a carbon-fuelled appliance, like a boiler, fire, non-electric heater or flue you must also have a carbon monoxide detector. This does not need to be linked to the fire alarms. Gas cookers and hobs do not need a carbon monoxide detector."

https://www.mygov.scot/home-fire-safety

We got a linked CO detector for gas boiler as part of a kit (see Amazon link above). Possibly a slight advantage to being linked even if it doesn't need to be.
 

Apart from the possibility of you burning to death in your bedroom if you don't hear the alarm in another room?

The smoke will have killed you first.

I'm not in Scotland at the moment, but I've installed a set that would meet the Scottish regs anyway. You can get 5 interlinked alarms with 10 year sealed batteries for £120 on popular internet shopping sites. 

£12 a year seems a no-brainer for the benefit of being woken up quickly before the smoke has spread around the house in the event of a fire, and regardless of whether you're listening to loud music on headphones.

There is that

I bought a Google Nest connected smoke alarm about 5 years ago and its still going well on the original battery. Its a bit spendy but:

1. There's a nice night light when you turn out the main lights to help you see for a few seconds when you go to bed.
2. App connected so if it goes off when I'm out, I get an alert and can potentially check via other channels if anything is wrong.
3. But by far the best feature is when burning dinner/toast, rather than instantly blasting out an ear-piercing alarm, a voice warns you that smoke is detected and the alarm will sound shortly, giving me time to reach for the long broom handle we keep specifically to hit the button on the alarm to silence it before it goes off. Worth the extra IMHO.

Interesting, thanks for that. I don't really use twitter but could only really see one guy essentially talking to himself but I'm probably not using the app correctly! Is he a Scottish solicitor? (I note he's an ex-MSP but has he real knowledge / authority of the subject?)

I think he is very well informed on matters of property ownership but also has a strong political stance so his comments may be coloured by that.

If you can just use wireless interlinked throughout your property it’s relatively cheap.

However if your house was required to have hardwired alarms for hall and landing (as many houses do) to meet building standards / warrants. Then you have to have a hybrid system where by the new standalone devices in kitchen and primary living space, can trigger the wired and vice versa.  Which puts the price up considerably.

You can’t just replace the hardwired heads with wireless as it will invalidate your building warrant and then risk your home insurance.

That comes with the acknowledgement that most homes won't actually have a building warrant. In the grand scheme of things, they're a very recent invention, building standards ie. 'regulations' were only introduced in the early 60's in this country. 

Edit: at least that's based on my somewhat fickle memory! 

I find myself wondering how secure the wireless interlink is?  Could someone drive down a street setting off all the alarms for their amusement? I recall a blog post a decade or so ago from someone in the states who build a little transmitter to go round putting the brakes on shopping trolleys in the isles, that used an RF fence to prevent trolleys leaving the site…

Not so much aimed at job creation but the reduction of fire deaths is the reason why we do them. Much of the % of targets is hit by ops crews as well as a community safety department. Being over 60 is only 1 small factor in the formula that creates a list to target higher risk areas but everyone is entitled to free alarms. The fire services aim is to create the safest community and by fitting alarms we are hopefully doing that. 

I'm a bit confused by your comments.

When you write 'hardwired alarms for hall and landing' do you mean alarms whose power is hardwired into the mains, or do you mean alarms which are interlinked by physical cable whose purpose is signalling?

Whatever smoke alarm system currently exists in a house, it would seem reasonable that you should be able to completely remove it all, and replace it with one which satisfies the current regulations. But you seem to be saying that that's not the case.

How do you find out the exact legal position for any particular house?

There's  that.  Also, as wireless doesn't work too well through smoke, I'd be interested in how effective wirelessly linked alarms are compared to hard-wired.

The (terse) legal position is here

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2019/8/article/2/made

The Building Regulations interpretation is here. 

https://www.gov.scot/publications/building-standards-technical-handbook-202...

Which references BS 5839: Part 6: 2019 as the required standard for new installations, which will cost you  money to read

Hardwired for power and cable signalling.

Yes it would seam logical to be able to remove and replace with a system meeting the current number and interlinked regs. However in Scotland the change in the alarm legislation was made without retrospective updating or changing of the building warrants regarding previous alarm installation to reflect that. The pieces of legislation stand separate.

I had converted a loft and as a planning /building warrant had to add the hardwired powered and cable interlinked for hall and landing. When the new Scot Gov regs came out I investigated and it quickly became apparent that to be safe on the insurance/future sale front I would have to honour the building warrant so the hall and landing would need to remain hardwired and the additional units could be standalone but everything had to be interlinked to meet the ref change; hence a hybrid system was required costing more, or keep the hardwire and duplicate with wireless heads in hall and landing to allow communication with wireless units in kitchen and primary living area.

Essentially the new regs may have had good intention but the SNP completely failed to consider the existing legislation and obviously it had no pragmatic element ie the requirement for interlinked is greater in a larger house and virtually worthless in a small flat. But both get treated the same.

Thanks for those links.

Thanks. And f ucking hell - what a mess. I'll have to figure out what position I'm in. I have no idea of the details of what I have inherited from the previous idiotic owner of this house ...

Presumably depends on your insurer but, having checked, my policy explicitly states it isn't dependent on smoke alarms being installed at all.

Why? Fire Safety ranging from sofas to cables has improved dramtically over recent years, it is one of the unsung success stories in reducing fires and deaths. Its also why fire stations etc are alot less busier than they were a few decades ago.

Next thing is you will be compaining about anything that keeps you alive.

That would be an obvious and literally fatal design flaw so it would be pretty surprising.

We had a similar issue. It's far cheaper (£150) to add a separate wireless system for full house than trying to integrate new detectors with old control panel for a system that includes smoke detectors on landings but nothing in living room or kitchen as required now.

The alarm company said £65 per detector plus labour but didn't actually supply a quote when asked and the guy didn't sound convinced it would integrate properly with the old system. 

I'd have said a reduction in chimney fires due to increased central heating is the main factor over here.

Massive decline in smoking (45% of population in 1974, 15% now) so fewer sofas set on fire and sofas less lethal now when they burn.

Although more scented candles these days. I knew somebody burnt out of their house that way.

Your policy may not require / mention smoke alarms, but it may have a clause regarding compliance with planning/building warrants.

Smoke alarms only have a life of 10 years before they cant be trusted to accurately work anymore. Modernd ones have in built internal batteries which last 10 years so they should need replacing until the unit has reached the end of its usable life. 

It's explicit, which did surprise me

"It’s not a requirement of your cover to have a smoke alarm, but if fitted check them regularly to ensure they are still working"