Re: Smoke Detectors - Landlord Forum thread

Re: Smoke Detectors by Micah on June 14, 2012 @15:23

Went into a friend's house last month and noticed the smoke detectors looked really old. Lit a match next to it and let it smoke... Not a peep. I took it down and saw that the date on the back was 1993!!! I was still in high school then! lol

Needless to say, that's what reminded me to replace mine.

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Re: Smoke Detectors by Eloise on June 14, 2012 @19:46	[ Reply ]

Thank you Micah! If it's a SFH, and it's occupied, would a simple letter reminder to the tenant be ok? If the smoke detectors are "younger" than 10 years? I hadn't even thought of that!

Re: Smoke Detectors by Micah on June 14, 2012 @22:02	[ Reply ]

Replacing batteries and checking the smoke detectors is a great excuse to get into the units and see how they are being treated...

Re: Smoke Detectors by Eloise on June 15, 2012 @09:40	[ Reply ]

I was there just 2 weeks ago {and I live 700 miles away, lol} so that won't work for me this time around {wish I had thought about it then!} but I like the idea!!! Will need to adopt it in a couple of months! :)

Re: Smoke Detectors by Mark (CA) on June 16, 2012 @03:41	[ Reply ]

Do you trust your tenants enough that you would not get a security deposit? In all seriousness, when you show up to your rental and there are a few fire engines pumping water on it and the Fire Marshal asks you about smoke detectors (they will ask as will your insurance company) do you want to tell them that you asked your tenants to check on them or do you want to pull out a piece of paper or print off a record of your physical inspection of every detector in the house and when you changed the battery? Don't be the typical news report about the landlord who had smoke detectors that didn't have batteries. 85% of fire fatalities are in the home.

Re: Smoke Detectors by OK-LL on June 17, 2012 @11:16	[ Reply ]

I don't know what it is about SDs that tenant find so difficult to handle, but about 25% of them are disabled by tenants in my rental units -- usually they start to beep and rather than replace the $1 battery, the tenant just takes the bad battery out and eventually loses the cover. A fire fatality in that case sounds like natural selection to me...