You’re not supposed to put them in the kitchen!
I am dreading putting one in because I know my cooking and the woodburner will set them off on a regular basis. I don't think I have ever cooked in a kitchen with one installed and failed to set it off :-(
It's really a question of the layout of the building and in particular the locations of where fires are likely to start and where the bedrooms are. The situation is immediately improved if the volume is divided and walls and floors, and doors are fire resisting and for example shut. Round here most Brits live in old houses where risks are really quite high and mostly two storey. If a bedroom has easy access to the outside by means of french doors that's a great benefit. My house is old, quite rambling and on three levels. It's formed of two main sections of two storeys and a number of rooms with a central rising staircase. There is a lot of timber construction and many contents. Smoke detectors are in the cellar where the washing machine is, outside the kitchen door with a C02 detector in the kitchen, in the main open hall and on the first floor landing. We have two fire extinguishers. My wife is asian and loves to use the wok at very high temperature and this has set off the detector several times. We had a power surge which caused a smoulder in the electrical cupboard (house having been totally rewired. There are fires reported in our local paper every regularly. One or even two in a house such as ours would be inadequate. You just need to be sensible. They are very inexpensive so I would tend to over install rather than under.
Thanks for the link to that site. I went there to check what I had just been told by the letting agency who had written a letter saying it was 1 detector per storey. That site says you need 1 minimum per dwelling but reccomends 1 per storey or more if it has a large surface are. Property in question is 3 floors of 15m2.
Will probably also give a "Low Battery" beep once a minute.
That will drive you mad and ensure that you go out and buy a replacement right away!
Most alarms have a test function. If fitted in holiday homes unoccupied for long periods, it's worth considering taking the battery out during such periods.
Battery ones are perfectly acceptable, Joseph. I just got the "Fire Angel" (non Angli, sed angeli) one recommended by Diana below. Really easy to set up, guaranteed 5 years battery, 10 years alarm.
Well said, we had a two year old freezer burn our garage down when we lived in Wales, fortunately was detached from the house, do you know if battery detectors are acceptable or has it to be direct wired like in the UK now?
And don't be talking about Mr Morrison's !
I saw Oscar Wilde's in the Pere Lachaise. It's covered in lipstick bisoux
Goodness - all we have around here are Italian ravers who think they can erect huge stacks of ghetto blaster amps and scratch vinyls all night in some mucky field. They get extremely short shrift from our very keen Gendarmerie who check all the vehicles with Italian carabinieri (with whom they have direct communication) and do road blocks in and out :)
I did go to Merlin's tomb once, in that Brocéliande forest. Amazing scenes...
These faery people leave wish notes for the old geezer :)
There really are druids around here! Some friends owned until recently a house with a large menhir in the garden and there was a wedding presided over by a druid there. Lots of strange goings on in the woods. Quite a few naturistes. A car hand painted with all sorts of cannabis leaf designs. Dreadlocks. Yurts. Mind you when I lived in London I had firewalkers (cool wet grass) living two doors away. They excavated out their dining room floor and installed a large tub which was used for self discovery groups. I was invited to one and went but my wife found out and came storming up the road to extract me. There are two "relaxation" facilities in our commune of only 800 souls. A council flat over the village school canteen was raided by the gendarmes who found a cannabis plantation in the loft. The guy was charged and was due to be tried but had a crise cardiaque after two weeks and saved the courts a fortune by dying. He used to walk around in a dark overcoat, shades and a blues brothers porkpie every day. Do you mean all communes in France aren't like this? Large numbers of benefits claimants with multiple children and rastamen fathers. I even got cajoled into reading Jack Kerouac in English to a group of poetry fanciers- his family came from the next village. Haven't been invited to any sacrifices though.
I didn't know there were ritual burnings of churches and chapels there, David ! Is it the Druids' work?
Yes and only last week here in Herault, I saw the pompiers shooting up the hill in our village to put out a chimney fire. So a reminder to everyone to get their chimney swept and keep the certificate...it happens more often than people think. I've had many people roll their eyes at paying 50 euro for having their chimney swept once a year, but 50 euro is better than you insurance being invalid!
Lots of older houses here in Brittany have timber framed roofs, lambris (timber) ceilings, timber stairs and timber first floors. Lots of Brits here fit curtains and have older style furniture which is not to the latest norms. You only have to read the local rag to see how many house fires there are (let alone the deliberate ones and the ritual and frequent burning of churches, chapels and of course tax offices)
I remember when we renovated our house here 10 years ago, we insisted the electrician fit one on the ground floor at the bottom of the stairs and one in the hallway at the top of the stairs plus one in each bedroom. We also have a fire blanket handy and an extinguisher. Can you tell my Dad was a fireman? Having heard and 'smelt' some of the horrid fires my Dad had to sort out which could have been less tragic if fire alarms had been fitted, I wouldn't mess around.
One point to note though is that our house here in South of France has concrete and tiled floors, no curtains or carpets, all our houses in the UK were wooden floors with carpets and plenty of soft furnishings. There is less to burn in our current French house than the UK one but the fumes of burning appliances/wires will still be toxic.
James - I had a Smeg 'Self Clean oven' before unfortunately for me it never self cleaned just meant the products I could use to try to clean it were restricted...sounds like you have one that actually does try to self clean...just at the wrong time!
Another point to everyone is even if you have them installed - don't forget to check the batteries once a year. Do it on New Years Day so you don't forget.
Isn’t that courting disaster?
Better to make sure you have sited them correctly so they don’t go off all the time than risk a fire without any warning!
This is probably a silly question, but does alarm have to be working? Can it be fitted and the battery left out - I had almost daily false alarms in previous house so took the battery out.
In the race to join the "Nuclear Club" France mined 76,000 tons of Uraniun from 201 sites within the Hexagone between 1948 and 2001. In order to achieve this, they had to dispose of 200 million tons of waste rock and 50 million tons of radioactive "tailings". Stories are told of improper disposal of radioactive waste to resurface roads and even in the production of building blocks.
So now they are making a big fuss about ionizing smoke detectors These contain a minute amount of americium-241 that results in a dose rate of one thousandth of background gamma radiation at a distance of 1 metre.
Gathering 7 million of these devices together in one place would certainly result in a health hazard. Much better to leave them where they are, saving lives and doing no harm individually.