Smoke Alarm Installation and Testing

Ionisation alarms respond quickly to fast flaming fires with little smoke. Photoelectric alarms respond much faster to smouldering fires, which is the type that kills people in homes because it develops slowly overnight in furniture, bedding and wiring.

Fire services across Australia recommend photoelectric alarms for residential use, and every alarm we install is photoelectric and compliant with AS 3786. Photoelectric alarms are also far less prone to the cooking nuisance alarms that lead people to disable them, which matters more than any specification, because a disabled alarm protects nobody.

Placement is not a matter of preference. Alarms are required on every storey of a home, in or near each sleeping area, and in the path of travel people would use to leave the building. A single alarm in a hallway of a two-storey house does not meet that.

There are also practical placement rules that get ignored. Alarms should be at least 300mm from a wall or corner and away from the dead air space where a wall and ceiling meet, because smoke does not circulate there. They should not sit directly next to a bathroom door, an air conditioning outlet or a ceiling fan, and they should be far enough from a cooktop to avoid constant nuisance alarms while still covering the area.

A 240V hardwired alarm with a battery backup is the standard for new work and the right answer for most homes. It cannot be disabled by removing a battery and it does not stop working when a battery dies.

Interconnection is the upgrade that actually saves lives. When alarms are interconnected, one detecting smoke sounds every alarm in the house. In a two-storey home, that is the difference between a smouldering fire in the lounge waking someone upstairs or not. Victorian requirements for interconnection depend on when the home was built or significantly renovated, with homes built or substantially renovated since 2014 required to have interconnected alarms in some circumstances. Interconnection can be wired or wireless, and wireless is what makes retrofitting practical in an existing house without pulling up floors.

Victorian rental law places specific duties on rental providers. Smoke alarms must be tested at least annually, and the batteries must be replaced yearly as part of the same duty. Repairs to a smoke alarm are an urgent repair, so a faulty alarm is not something that can wait for the next inspection cycle.

For agents and rental providers we do this as an annual round with a written report per property, listing alarm locations, manufacture dates, expiry dates, test results and battery changes. That report is what you produce if a claim is ever made, and it is the reason we photograph and record rather than just ticking a box.

Every smoke alarm has a date of manufacture printed on the back and must be replaced 10 years from that date. This applies to sealed 10-year lithium units and to hardwired alarms alike. The sensing chamber degrades with age, dust and humidity, and an alarm that still beeps when you press the test button may no longer detect smoke reliably. The test button confirms the sounder and battery, not the sensor.

When we replace alarms we write the replacement date on the unit so that the next person does not have to get a ladder out to work it out. If you have not looked at yours, take a photo of the back of one. If the date is before 2016, they are due.