All landlords should be well aware of the NZ smoke alarm legislation requiring all rental properties to have working smoke alarms or detectors and they must be photoelectric and have a long battery life, or be hard-wired.
The legislation stipulates that smoke alarms must be installed within 3 metres of each bedroom door, or in every room where a person sleeps, in each level or storey of a multi-storey or multi-level home and in all rental homes, boarding houses, rental caravans, and self-contained sleep-outs.
Furthermore all new smoke alarms must be photoelectric, have a battery life of at least eight years, or be hard-wired, they must be installed according to the manufacturer’s instructions and meet international standards.
But did you know that even if you have a Long Life Photo-Electronic Smoke Alarm in your rental property that if it has a battery which can be removed – you may not be complying with tenancy smoke alarm legislation?
Where this becomes confusing is that while the smoke alarm itself has a 10 year life span, the life span of a 9V battery may only be 8 years, or even less! (and the packaging may not highlight this).
As with many parts of the Residential Tenancies Act, this one is yet again a little bit ‘gray’ as nowhere in the Act does it say you must have a smoke alarm with a ‘fitted battery’, but it does seem to be what it eludes to, and it is certainly what the smoke alarm service companies advise is required!
While we have a ‘best practice’ process for smoke alarms where we record detailed information about the type of smoke alarm, location and expiry dates, to be honest I am not entirely sure that all of our properties have smoke alarms with fitted batteries.
Because we want to ensure that we are not asking our landlords to change smoke alarms which do not need replacing, I called tenancy services to see if they were able to either confirm or deny that this is a fact, and unfortunately they could not do either!
The Act also says that tenants have a responsibility to replace batteries as required, but perhaps this is only for pre-existing alarms installed prior to 01/07/2016?
We highly recommend to all of our clients that they use a professional smoke alarm company that offers replacement alarms, accurate recording and monitoring of expiry dates, as well as annual and between tenancy checks (using all sorts of specialised testing equipment), and all for an annual cost of just over $100 which we feel is well worth the cost.
In our opinion you are better to be ‘safe than sorry’, and at the very least ensure you install one of the models which does have the fitted battery that cannot be removed. Not only are the fines for getting it wrong costly, (up to $7,200), but the cost of losing lives, well you cannot put a price on that!
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