Landlord want to charge for smoke alarms - advice?

Oliviana_London

thorsoak wrote: »

Read and learn; read and learn!

Well, from some people I really have what to learn! The funny thing is that the people I have what to learn from, are the people who understood me anyway, regardless of my language disadvantage Otherwise how come I get along so well with some, and others just misunderstand me totally? ))

DevCoder

We have fire detector (both ionisation and heat/smoke) heads in our data centres coupled with inergen gas suppression systems (the gas floods the room with an inert gas if two heads in each void raise a detection).

At no point have we ever used head covers when we are merely moving equipment/racks etc, we may disable auto-drop of the gas system but it would still cut power to the data centre and HVAC. to my knowledge we have only ever had one case in 20 years where a dust level via simple moving caused this to occur. And this is with extremely sensitive equipment.

I would find it difficult to advise that someone should cover a smoke head when doing simple things like moving in or out. If you are tearing a wall down or having tiling done (or plastering) which kicks up a large amount of dust then yes the covers should be used.

I also wouldnt expect a third party (ie tenant) to mess with such a crucial system such as mains powered fire alarms. Would it be sensible that they also maintain the PRV on the unvented cylinder or boiler? Or that the ensure all electrical connections are tight at the CU?

The tenant should do what is reasonably required which in this case is replacing the 9V battery when the alarm tells them to and to perform a test button press every so often as described in the MI.

Oliviana_London

propertyman wrote: »

They cannot be required to service or clean them, however could be liable for acts of waste.

That would mean living in such a way as to give rise to huge amounts of dust, and/or failing to clean or take steps to prevent that happening which then contaminates the detector.

That must however be beyond what is normal, and what would be expected had the landlord, aware of the need to service/clean them on a regular basis as
a; it is not nor cannot be the tenants responsibility
b: will inevitably get dusty
c: need to be serviced to resolve b and ensure they work.

For the OP attention.

tinsilver

Dear all,

thank you so much for everyone's (impassioned) responses to my question. I'm really sorry for not updating sooner - we were moving to the US and only just got internet installed in our apartment.

I have learned so much from the discussion. It's amazing how fine the differences are in definitions and how precise one has to be with the English Language. I have sent an email to the LL making the point that the condition of the internals of the smoke alarms was not recorded in the check-in report and reiterating the point that we were not instructed to carry out this type of maintenance, nor given instruction on how to do so.

Thanks again, what a fantastic community. I will post updates as they come in.

Cheers,

Ricky and Suzi