All homes in Scotland require interlinked smoke alarms

[ICouldHaveCheckedFirst]

www.gov.scot/publications/fire-and-smoke-alarms-in-scottish-homes/

We weren't aware of this until we got a leaflet through the door from a company wanting to charge us for fitting some, so we checked. The above was posted on the gov.scot website 2 days ago.

Maybe everyone else knows already, but I thought I'd post just in case.

New regulations are complete overkill for normal size family home. We have smoke alarms protecting the hallways (upstairs and downstairs) i.e. our routes out should there be a fire. Plus a heat alarm in the kitchen / diner. Yet this is not enough - we need another smoke alarm in our main living space which would need to be situated less than a metre than one in the hall. Bureaucracy gone mad

Did smoke alarms or a shortage of them affect what happened in Grenfell, by the way?
I agree that the rules don't make sense. We have a medium sized house. The sitting room is next door to the hallway - an alarm in each is nonsensical. A multitude of carbon monoxide alarms is overkill too.
Artex ceilings - could conceivably contain asbestos - and now expected to drill lots of holes in them.
Isn't the point of alarms that they are loud - so you don't need one in every room, which this is close to being, particularly if they are interlinked. Things are going to get very noisy and very expensive. The interlinking will probably break down anyway. And is there a risk from the radio waves?

Has this been delayed now, does anyone know?
And any chance of reducing the overkill?
As far as I know the Grenfell disaster happened because the cladding was flammable, not because of any issue with fire alarms?! So why this?

Yes @Greektome, I think it's been delayed for a year.

Thanks. Wish they'd change it though. I'm guessing that Scotland will hold the world record for number of fire alarms per house.

Funnily enough we've managed with one upstairs and one down so far. I'm sure when it goes off (cooking a steak...) the folk at the end of the street can hear it. I think we need to start from a place of ensuring that there is a decent one in every household first rather than 20 in a house that is up for sale versus none (for example) in an ex local authority that's been lived in for 40 years by the same person and therefore has never been sold and isn't rented so could easily fall through the cracks and have no smoke alarm fitted at all.

This is just going to be another huge unaffordable cost for us.
If we need to get an electrician to do this it will be hundreds!
I get the need for fire alarms but why hard wired

It’s completely unrealistic for those of us just struggling Along to buy food shopping and dinner money

You can get battery ones. But it's completely over the top. And why? They're designed so that you don't need them in adjacent rooms.

Seems well-intentioned but not realistic for some. I live in a flat with bedroom, 6 foot wide hall, bathroom, kitchen / sitting room. it's 15 steps from the front to the back of the flat and I need 3 smoke alarms costing what, £100? I live in a deprived area where this type of housing is the norm and I guess a lot of people would be unable to afford it. People here can't even afford school shoes and decent food.

I’m hoping to fit stick-on smoke alarms and heat alarm similar to the smoke alarms we have already on the two floors. We have artex ceilings and due to the age of the house don’t know if they might contain asbestos, have deliberately avoided disturbing the present light fittings only for this. I suppose we must be grateful to Nicola for sparing us the panic for another year until the election is safely over. Strikes me as snp virtue signalling.

I agree, Sandy, and we have similar here. They shouldn't be forcing people to make changes to their houses and to incur costs when it's way above what people in other countries are required to do, and isn't even relevant to what happened at Grenfell.
I would use the current holes in the ceiling to fix the new alarms, but needing so many will mean getting some stick-on ones. They will probably fall off, taking the paint with them though.
I wish the SNP would address actual problems. The problem was the cladding. So why not address dodgy cladding in Scotland, rather than bringing in over the top fire regulations at the expense of citizens?

Well - there is a captive audience forced to pay whatever it costs, good money making scam scheme for some companies.

How many free prescriptions can you get for £220?

Glad it's been delayed as it's one of the last things folk need to get stressed about in 2020.