ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades smoke detectors in houses

I was talking to a local Building inspector today and I asked him about this requirement for smoke detectors.
He told me that his department has refused 12 Code Compliance Certificates because no-one bothered to install (or even specify) smoke alarms in new or altered buildings.
Now, I'm not sure about you, but this would tend to make me think that the message hasn't got through to our Architects and Builders or on the other hand it is being ignored.
However I do agree with Kiwi's comments above about the biggest need in older houses.
NZ seems to have a lot of old houses, some of which have never been rewired since they were built, at least a majority of the State houses that are still on HousingNZ's books have been rewired, but think of all the ones that were sold off years ago that never got the same treatment.
These houses are a time-bomb, just waiting to go off.
I re-wired such a place as one of the last jobs I ever did as an Electrical Contractor and believe me, the condition of the TRS cable (sometimes joined into wires inside wood capping in the roof) was nothing short of abysmal.
Tap the cable with a screwdriver and you would have 3 bare tinned copper wires before you.
The fact that things have even got to this stage is just a travesty, but who do you blame?.
You guys may remember a couple of years back we had a spate of 3 house fires in the same street, we first thought there may have been an arsonist involved, but found no traces of accelerants.
At the time there were some road works happening in the street over (a new sewer main was being installed) and every so often a truck carrying shingle would rumble down this street.
That explained the fires, they were the only 3 houses on the street that had never been re-wired since built.

On the rewiring issue, the adoption of BS1363 and the ring circuit in the U.K. probably did much to encourage the removal of very old wiring. That's not to say that there weren't still some ancient installations in use in later years, but many houses were completely rewired in the 1950s/60s to the new standard and all the original 1920s/30s stuff pulled out.

Although rubber-sheathed cable was used on the earlier rewires, most rewires from the late 1950s onward used PVC.

About the only time today I see really old 1930s wiring in homes is on a lighting circuit, but even that's becoming fairly unusual now. Some of those 1950s/60s rewires were economy jobs which installed new rings for sockets but left the original lighting circuits intact.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-05-2006).]