Smoke alarms in your home

So many times when viewing jobs I see no smoke alarms, or battery smoke alarms with no battery in and it amazes me that such an easy fix that could potentially save a life, hasn't been carried out!

As homeowners, there's currently no requirement for you to have any form of fire detection in your home but a lot of people will have 1, maybe 2 battery powered smoke alarms. Rarely is there maintenance carried out on these alarms. 

According to Zoopla, the average Brit moves house every 23 years which means you should be replacing your smoke alarms at least twice in that time frame (every 10 years) and be changing the batteries 23 times (yearly) but rarely are the batteries changed. 

If you want a fit and forget alarm, AICO have 10 year sealed battery alarms which are mains powered. Wire it in to the mains, leave it for 10 years and then replace. They even put an expiry date on the side for you! Apart from the odd bit of maintenance like hoovering the alarms to remove any dust, there's not really much to do with them. 

If you wanted to upgrade your smoke or heat alarms further, you could opt to have them all interlinked so if one goes off, so do the others.