Smoke detector in bedrooms legislation

[Midland Retty]

I see where you are coming from Messy but alas I dont think thats the intended interpretation of 8.1.2
I took it purely and simply to be aimed at vulnerable groups such as less abled persons.

Again this argument boils down to the level of control someone has in a given space. You could argue for instance that a  hotel guest is in control of their own hotel bedroom.

Thus if they decide to do something silly such as fall asleep with a cigarette in their hand it's their own fault.

Fixtures and fittings in the bedroom which are out of the guest's control but which may be sources of ignition or fuel should be adequately controlled by good management to lessen the chance of a fire occuring - i.e electrical items PAT tested for instance, correct standards of furnishings in smoking rooms etc etc.

Would I like to be afford everyone the earliest opportunity of a fire occuring? Yes.

Could I enforce that Heat detection be changed to smoke detection in a hotel bedroom? No. I really don't think it is enforceable.

[nearlythere]

21.1.7 also says "In view of their lack of sensitivity, heat detectors are not suitable for the protection of areas where warning
of the presence of smoke is required or where a small fire would cause unacceptable damage."

[xan]

My county has always had a policy of SD in bedrooms etc,so we don't have an issue of loads of bedrooms with HD anyway.Regardless of what it says in the BS,the question is,does HD give a person enough warning to wake up and get out of a fire?If not,then is SD better?If it is,is it reasonable to enforce?
5839 does not say that HD is king,only that in a typical sized bedroom the risk 'might not' warrant SD.Therefore,there may be a case where 'it might' warrant SD,and there we can have the debate.I can understand that ,in areas that have lots of bedrooms with existing HD,enforcing a change might not be reasonable under the circumstances,but is there a strong argument not to fit SD as standard in new build bedrooms,given the change in smoking laws etc?
I have lots of SD in my house,makes me sleep that little bit better,irrational or not.

[nearlythere]

I see little in the BS which specifies nothing but heat detection in a bedroom. If all rooms are none smoking rooms then smoke detection it is for me. If guests require smoking rooms then put them in a room with heat detection and warn them that they may not receive sufficient warning in the event of a fire in the room. If people must smoke they don't really care much about their health anyway.
That will be my FRA.

[jokar]

At whose cost?  The simple thought of changing HD heads to SD heads is not that simple.  It may involve a new panel and all sorts of things that will not fir ALARP.  It is easy for enforcers they do not have to think about cost, they just state do it, but what about proportionality?

[colin todd]

1. Heat detectors in bedrooms had not the first thing to do with smoking in bedrooms. Trust me that is not relevant.

2. Mr Retty , Protest away but like MRs retty, who as a woman can multi task, try to think risk at the same time as you are protesting. I had never put you down as a "control" freak, but the issue is nothing to do with control it is about risk. You are not entirely free to do as you please in your home, as if you take your smoke alarms away, you will commit an offence under the building act, and be sent to the salt mines as a punisment, or worse still be sent to work in LFEPA. You are right, there is no legislation to require you to put AFD in your bedroom, same as there is no legislation requiring smoke detectors in bedrooms rather than heat detectors. And at last we agree. The AFd is for others, not the person in the room of origin. Heat detectors eat that objective many times over, so why on earth would you want smoke detectors.

3. Messey. What am I to do with you. I do my best to sort out your confusions, but it is a labour born only of desparation sometimes. If you had paid attention to the mind correction of your equality and diversity people,, of which there are 9989 in LFEPA, you would know that the one thing that really does matter in the crazy world in which we live is to try to give disabled people equivalence to able bodied people. In my humble opinion, this is infinitely more important than demeaning women by calling them "dear" as we do in scotland. It really is ever so simple. If you are in a hotel, and there is a fire in your room, you will jump out of bed  raise the alarm and make pumps 45 (asuming it is only a small fire). Someone who needs to use a wheelchair cant do that. So to help them, we compensate by giving even earlier warning to give them the same chance as the you have. That is also what the Home Office recommended in the purple guide for exactly the same reason. The HMIs at the time actually understood what they were doing, unlike the new incumbents, not least because they asked for and sponsored the work that led to detectors in bedrooms, and had the research findings as did we when we wrote BS 5839-1 1988 and the later 2002 version. I am sorry if you think there is an anomaly in what I drafted, but I was trying to give disabled persons an enhanced standard of fire safety. You are also misinterpreting the BS by selectively choosing some bits without reading it in context. Read the whole thing, and you will find we point out the role of the L2 system in a sleeping risk in the text and in Annex A.

And there is one thing that is being missed: People at home die in bedrooms of fire origin, because they dont have PAT testing, regular room inspections, avoidance of portable heaters and electric blankets, and they smoke in bed. None of this is applicable to hotels, and guess what? Well, surprise surprise NOBODY dies in the room of fire origin in UK hotels whatever type of detector is installed. OH sorry, I tell a lie. You lost one in London a year or two ago. He set fire to his clothes and even the greatest fire brigade in the whole of.... London couldnt save him. Oh and guess what? He had a smoke detector in his bedroom. If you want to save lives from fire, go down to Brixton and install smoke alarms in their homes, which is where people die, and stop worrying about people who demonstrably never die anyway.

[messy]

Thanks (as ever) for the background. I do understand the background & rationale to HD or SD in such bedrooms. I also accept that there is a low rate of fire deaths in hotels. But:

I am a west Londoner so wouldn't be seen dead in Brixton (or anywhere souf of the river) unless I really had to go there.

I accept that those with mobility issues would have a slower evac time than someone as fit, healthy, active and bloody good looking as a me. But call me old fashioned, if given a choice, I too would like to have as earlier warning as possible of a fire in my room. We are both relevant persons as defined by the FSO. However in a fire or smoke in my room (however rare it might be) - I fry, whilst the disabled person is awoken.  

So what makes a disabled person more relevant than me?

I might ask that at the next equal ops course!

[kurnal]

Following the principles of prevention, logic would lead most of us to consider that if we put a smoke detector in our bedroom we may be a little safer than if we rely  soley on the inhalation of smoke, coughing smell of burning and low level noises caused by combustion  waking us up.   BS5839 also leads us towards this conclusion by suggesting that as a non ambulant person takes longer to self evacuate they should have the earliest warning of fire to ensure they enjoy the same level of safety as ambulant persons. Maybe.

On the other hand persons are not dying in hotel bedrooms and there have never been any studies to determine whether in fact the smoke detector would be effective in saving lives in case of fire- comparing the time taken to wake somebody if a detector is fitted or not.

I tend to take a flexible approach myself and sometimes recommend smoke detectors and sometimes dont- depending on other factors. Sometimes where there are excessive travel distances, substandard doors, bedrooms opening into staircases- the smoke detector in these cases can enhance the protection to the escape routes.

If the recommendation is simply for the protection of the ambulant relevant person in the room then I may suggest a stand alone domestic Grade F to  supplement the heat detector.  
New build is easy - but in existing buildings the blanket exchange of heat detectors to smoke detectors often is not easy or wise- the wiring tends to place them just outside the bathroom door.

[colin todd]

The good people of Brixton deserve your attention Messey, however confused of west london you might be. You are not more relevant than a disabled person. You are still missing the point. We dont give you a wheelchair either,  much as you might find it as much fun to drive as a red HGV. We reserve the wheelchair for mobility impaired people so they can have mobility approaching yours. We cannot do anything about good looks,  so I suppose that compared to you they are still disadvantaged. We give disabled people a nice toilet of their own, with loads of space that you do not have in the bogs at LFEPA HQ. That is to make the toilet as easy to use as you find the grotty stalls in your toilet. We give disabled people a refuge and allow them to use the fire-fighting lift in the building, but alas Messey these facilities are not there for your fun and enjoyment. They are there to make it as easy for disabled people to get out of the building as you do, but alas you will need to trundle down the stairs in the Nat west tower when the fire alarm goes off.  We give deaf and hard of hearing people a vibrating pad for their beds to alert them to the fire alarm signal. No, Messey, much as you could no doubt think up all sorts of uses for vibrating devices, sorry but you cannot have one, even if you do need it for reasons as diverse as a tendency to sleep through alarms as a result of alcohol abuse. Are you following a pattern here? So, we give disabled people a smoke detector in an attempt to care for them and their safety, such as to make them almost as safe as you. You do not need the detector because despite your use of emotive language you are not going to fry ever. You will die after a long and useful life, helping the people of brixton I hope, of old age and insanity brought about as a result of industrial mind-numbing.
Does this help your confusion at all?

[CivvyFSO]

So, we give disabled people a smoke detector in an attempt to care for them and their safety, such as to make them almost as safe as you.

I wish you would make up your mind. I thought the detection was not there to protect the person in the room of origin. Are we protecting the escape route or the people?

So if smoke detection is ok for the disabled persons room then why is heat ok for my room? Why am I and my family put in a position where a nice slow smouldering fire can carry on producing CO and all the other nasty stuff in our room without alerting us when SD would pick it up nice and quick?

PAT testing, smoking bans and regular room inspections may take place in the sort of places that can afford your services, and in the places you can afford to stay in, but there are some ropey old buildings out there that people pay to sleep in.

There may not be deaths attributed to heat detection in hotel bedrooms yet, but what is the justification for not suggesting fitting SD when it is acknowledged above that it improves safety?

[Allen Higginson]

So, we give disabled people a smoke detector in an attempt to care for them and their safety, such as to make them almost as safe as you.

I wish you would make up your mind. I thought the detection was not there to protect the person in the room of origin. Are we protecting the escape route or the people?

So if smoke detection is ok for the disabled persons room then why is heat ok for my room? Why am I and my family put in a position where a nice slow smouldering fire can carry on producing CO and all the other nasty stuff in our room without alerting us when SD would pick it up nice and quick?

PAT testing, smoking bans and regular room inspections may take place in the sort of places that can afford your services, and in the places you can afford to stay in, but there are some ropey old buildings out there that people pay to sleep in.

There may not be deaths attributed to heat detection in hotel bedrooms yet, but what is the justification for not suggesting fitting SD when it is acknowledged above that it improves safety?

There is a significant differential between the risk of false alarms occurring from the ensuite bathrooms in relation to smoke detection locations (particularly where a direct upgrade of heat detector to smoke detector has occurred) over the numbers of actual fires in hotel rooms.This (in my opinion) justifies not installing smoke detection as normal practice.
Fires in general occur in rooms/areas of the home that are not used for sleeping (aside from fires where an accelerant has been used to set a fire in sleeping areas making detection somewhat irrelevant) so why should a hotel be any different?

[colin todd]

On a point of accuracy, if you put an ionisation smoke detector in the bedroom if might be 20 minutes into this slow smoudering fire before it operated. And heres the rub: you get so many false alarms from sd that there is complacency and the actual standard of fire safety will be lower for everyone. Then the fire brigade will complain. Then they will want staff alarms and investigation of alarm signals and it will all go horribly wrong one day because I/os in effect put everyone at risk trying to protect people who are not at risk. And when it goes all horribly wrong, as it will, some of us will be standing outside the court waiting for the expert witness work to tell the judge why it was all caused by over zealous and ill informed enforcement. You read it here first. Quotations for the expert witness evidence on request. Meantime the messeys might like to ask for advice from HQ policy.

[colin todd]

SIGH I thought i had made it clear, but then the home office thought they had too but everyone thought they knew better than the Inspectorate. We are using afd to protect the escape route and not people in rooms who do not need protection. But we are risk assessing the need for protection and positively discriminating in favour of disabled people, who are people espcially at risk and are required by the FSO to be identified as such in the FRA, to ensure that they are adequately protected, taking into account their reduced mobility. The FBU always said that the words "where necessary" would be misunderstood. I always thought they meant by the public. But then maybe they knew their own members better than I did.

[kurnal]

This argument keeps resurfacing. And no doubt will continue to do so. I believe the reason for this is not necessarily the issue itself, more a lack of clarity on the status of the Guidance Documents, BS5839 and the principle of ALARP.

If the Guidance for existing buildings had the status of an Approved Code of Practice it would be easy. The benchmark standard would be defined- but would take us towards prescription rather than risk assessment.

The duty is to reduce the level of risk from fire to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable. In determining what that level is, we have to recognise that Society accepts a level of residual risk- this is usually identified and monitored through Government statistics of injuries and deaths through fire. The guidance documents and British Standards et al  are all designed to sustain this benchmark level of acceptable residual risk.

Its similar in other areas of Health and Safety Law- take for example manual Handling Regulations where the Code of Practice  includes a "filter" or in respect of workplace noise levels where action levels are set, ventilation, dust etc etc.

Currently in most existing hotels and other sleeping accommodation in which the layout and means of escape etc  are provided in accordance with the benchmark guidance, it is considered that the BS5839 part 1 2002 represents the benchmark standard for fire detection and alarm systems.Since the Sleeping Accommodation Guidance Document reinforces 5839 as the benchmark, then it is actually telling us that relevant persons are adequately protected with heat detection in the room. Could they be made safer? Undoubtedly we could go further in driving down the  level of risk by retrospectively providing additional smoke detection in bedrooms.

But how much safer would they be? And would the cost to the Nation justify the benefit? And does the Nation want to pay for this unquantified benefit? So far the National Guidance indicates not.

I must admit that the lack of research and statistics to quantify the benefit of doing this would make it very difficult to justify or to enforce.

[Davidrh]

Just to let you good folk have the SP
As you will know I was required to put smoke seals on all my doors (all thro the hotel) and some 40 odd
bedrooms which all had HD's
Did I not like this !!!!!!!
Apart from the costs and practical problems I could not get the reasons round me head
Anyway I protested long and loud and guess what
The local fire office no longer required smoke seals on any of the doors but wants me to install SD's in all the hotel bedrooms.
We are a completely non smoking hotel but that does not stop the blighters.
Socks on the HD's EVERY week my friend without fail