For kitchen, garage or workshop use, fire services also recommend fitting a heat alarm. These sense hot air rather than smoke, and trigger when the air in the sensor chamber reaches a specific temperature, which is usually 58°C. Heat alarms are slower to respond than actual smoke alarms, but they’re also not as prone to false alarms. They won’t go off when you’re grilling sausages or burning toast, but they still provide ample warning if something catches fire in your kitchen. Their distinguishing feature is the fact that they can be linked to other alarms, both heat and smoke alarms, so that when one senses danger they all sound.

In addition, First Alert uses a patented design that provides 360 degrees of access to the sensors inside the unit, enhancing the responsiveness of the device to smoke. If you’re concerned about false alarms, don’t be. The unit features a test/hush button that silences the 85-decibel alarm. Smart smoke alarms not only trigger the alarm in your home but also send an alert to your phone. Ideal if you are out, or on holiday. If you are worried by any aspect of fire safety for any of these groups, please do talk to them and arrange a fire safety visit on their behalf. Free Home Fire Safety Visit By drilling two small holes in your ceiling, and screwing the base plate to the ceiling and then attaching the alarm unit to the plate, or,A linked detector will set off all alarms in a home through radio signal, so you can be assured that even if you’re asleep and the furthest alarm activates, all other alarms will activate, ensuring you hear it immediately. Pros: Can suit dustier areas, such as lofts, the area near your bathroom or rooms where people smoke. Now that the alarms law has changed in Scotland, you'll need to install interlinked heat and smoke alarms in your home.

Batteries used to be the weakness of most household smoke alarms, requiring replacement every year or so and usually running out of charge, causing the low battery alarm to ring, in the middle of the night. As with carbon monoxide alarms, the trend is now towards alarms with a built-in, 10-year lithium battery, designed to work for the alarm’s effective lifespan. In Scotland, these are now a legal requirement. In England and Wales, however, you can still buy and use alarms with a replaceable 9V battery, and these often work out cheaper. We’d recommend paying extra for the convenience and peace of mind, but the choice is yours. Is there anything else worth looking out for? Heat (thermal) alarms detect heat (hot air) instead of smoke. The alarm is triggered when the temperature within the sensor chamber reaches over 58 degrees Celsius – generally when a fire is well established. These alarms are more sensitive to smaller particles of smoke produced by the flaming stage of fires than optical alarms, and more easily triggered by cooking – causing false alarms.You can put them in kitchens and garages because they’re not prone to false alarms from cooking or exhaust fumes. But they are slower to respond than smoke alarms.

In Scotland, since February 2022, interlinked smoke and heat alarms have needed to be fitted in all homes.As a rule of thumb, it’s best to use optical alarms in living rooms, bedrooms or downstairs hallways where you either have a lot of upholstered furniture and soft furnishings or the alarm is likely to be set off by cooking fumes. Keep ionisation alarms for upstairs hallways or areas where dust or exposure to the elements (say, through an open door) might potentially set off an optical sensor. If in doubt, go optical or use a multi-sensor alarm. Use of ionisation alarms is generally being discouraged by many fire services, and some manufacturers have now discontinued their ionisation products.

This hardwired combination detector requires more advanced installation than a battery-operated version. However, it has a 10-year lifespan, and set-up is simple once the hardware is mounted—just use your smart device to scan a QR code on the device to get the process started. Combination smoke and heat detectors are enrolled as 24-hour zones. This means that they can cause a fire alarm upon activating, regardless of whether the system is in an armed or disarmed state. This is important, as you will want to receive emergency help for a fire regardless of the current arming state. If you are at home sleeping with your system disarmed, a fire alarm can occur. A fire alarm can also occur if you are away from home with the system armed. Either way, your system will take appropriate action.Of the many features that distinguish the Google Nest Protect, the ability to receive alerts and silence the alarm in the Nest app is a real game-changer. If you’ve ever frantically opened windows and fanned a smoke detector with a towel in an effort to silence a false alarm, you’ll agree that pushing a button in the app to silence the alarm is faster, simpler, and less unnerving. Nest even delivers a ‘heads-up’ alarm that delivers a push notification to the app and causes the smoke detector to glow yellow, giving you a chance to dismiss a false alarm before the unit enters full-fledged alarm mode.