New smoke alarm law. Scotland.

As of today, all homes in Scotland must have an interlinked smoke alarm system throughout the house whereby if one alarm sounds they all must sound.
For my two-bedroom, two-storey house, I am legally obliged to have a heat alarm in the kitchen, a smoke alarm in the lounge/living room, a smoke alarm at the bottom of the stairs and another at the top of the stairs outside the bedroom.
I don't know what the penalty for ignoring the law is. I have been unable to find that out. However, your insurance coverage may be void if you have a claim and were found not to have a compliant system fitted.
Owners of houses less than 10 years old should already have such a system installed as they have been included in new builds for the past decade.

 

Interlinked, sounds like a wiring nightmare.

 

No. They are wirelessly connected. I put mine up about a month ago and apart from the cost there were no problems.

 

If I was a betting man - I'd put money on the manufacturers of such alarms banging the price up to take advantage. It must a specific wireless frequency to avoid conflicting with blue tooth, routers etc.

We have smoke and CO2 alarms here - but not because we are forced to have them.

 

That's good.

Just as long as they dont malfunction and catch fire.

 

What price safety ...?

You can get both interlinkable Wired or Wireless Smoke alarms for around £10 and £30 respectively.

If you have an exisiting burglar alarm there is a range of wired smoke and heat sensors made specifically for them at around £20, though not sure if that would meet with those Scottish regulations ?
Fitted them to ours the other year after some folk the road had their wheely bins pushed up against their house door and set alight!

 

Ive got to add these to a flat that already has hard wired smoke alarms, madness.
Just another sad little bit of legislation from the powerless wee talking shop at the bottom of the Royal Mile.

 

I have a couple of hardwired smoke alarms too, but I have just left them installed and working.

 

We bought ours a few months ago and will install them on Friday. It's a complete kit of four smoke alarms, a heat detector and a carbon monoxide detector - all wireless with a remote control. I don't need the carbon monoxide detector as the only item 'burning' here is my boiler in the garage. And I have doubts about using the heat detector in the kitchen. Cooking in the summer makes my kitchen very hot and I'm wondering if the alarm would be triggered?

I live in a bungalow and begrudge paying out for this. The individual smoke alarms I already have are efficient and can be heard in every room whichever one triggers.

 

Aren't we supposed to be using Heat Pumps rather than gas boilers ?
That should be a laugh as news reports of existing installations show even young folk having to wear extra woolies as they cannot produce enough heat for the thousands they paid for its installation !!

They had all those problems with the Smart Gas and Electricity meters and the early models, SMETS1, not being able to handle transfering to a new supplier etc. so they had to upgrade to a SMETS2 model.
You think thats all over, not so, as they transmit their info over 2G or 3G networks but those networks are to be phased out in favour of 4G, so rendering the meter useless unless they go through another upgrade !

Will the smart meters become 'obsolete' by 2033? - Energy Live News

 

Apparently heat pumps are only feasible in houses that have massive insulation, most older ones don't.
And until they do all the necessary work for free I won't be getting one.
Not sure I want one anyway, I get a feeling hydrogen gas could turn out the eventual winner ,if not we are going to have a gas network that is ready for the next century that is redundant.