Folks,
I'm not sure who said it first but:
Like chickens, people are stupid.
Some people don't know what is good for them until they are either burned out of thier houses or they (or thier loved ones) are dead or severely injured.
Quite regularly on the TV news over here, there will be some house fire survivor saying something to the effect of "Oh, we should have had (or maintained our) smoke alarms".
Hindsight is a funny thing isn't it, but a lot of people never get that luxury to reflect on such an incident.
Kiwi,
The Building Act was amended here in 2003, to make it compulsory for all new houses to have smoke alarms fitted before the Code Compliance Certificate was signed and the house could be occupied.
Also:
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Smoke alarms are now required in all new homes. The building code was amended in April 2003 to require that "appropriate means of detection and warning of fire must be provided within each household unit".
The new requirement does not apply to existing homes but the regulations will mandate the installation of smoke alarms when a building undergoes an alteration or change of use to become a home or when an alteration is made to an existing home that requires a building consent.
Your TA (Terretorial(sp?) Authority) is responsible for seeing that these alarms are installed in line with the Building Inspections that occur during construction or alterations.
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Turns out they had taken the beeping alarm with low battery down and stuffed it under the towels in the laundry cupboard so they didn't have to listen to it !
I'd hate to think how many times I've seen this in houses either as a sparky or a FF.
I mean c'mon, you wouldn't take the windscreen wipers off you car because they get into your field of vision, would you?.
Once a smoke alarm starts beeping on low battery alarm, that is effectively a fail alarm, it will not detect smoke.
Finally, if you own a house and it catches fire and you have no smoke alarms installed, your Insurance policy (assuming you have it) should be made null and void, as you are not taking adequate care to protect the insured assets from damage.
Other side of the coin, people that have a fully functioning smoke alarm system, should pay a lower premium, to those that don't have one, just like burglar alarms.