Student flats and shared houses concentrate almost every residential fire risk factor into one building. Older housing stock, tired wiring, too many people for the number of power points, cooking at unusual hours, alcohol, candles, portable heaters, and a rotating population where nobody has lived there long enough to know how anything works.
They also have the highest rate of disabled smoke alarms of any housing type, which is the part that turns a risky building into a dangerous one.
Your landlord has legal obligations, and they are specific
Under the Residential Tenancies Act, and in force since July 2016, every rental in New Zealand must have working alarms that are either photoelectric with a battery life of at least eight years, or hardwired to the mains. A cheap unit with a replaceable nine volt battery does not meet the standard.
Placement is prescribed too. Within three metres of each bedroom door, or inside each bedroom. At least one on every level of a multi storey property. And specifically in every self contained sleepout, cabin or caravan on the property, which in flatting situations is very often where somebody is living.
The landlord installs them and replaces them at end of life, and must ensure they work at the start of every tenancy. If your flat does not meet this, you can raise it in writing with the landlord or property manager, and Tenancy Services can advise if it is not resolved.
And you have obligations too
Tenants must replace batteries in non sealed units during the tenancy and must tell the landlord about any fault or defect. Critically, tenants may not tamper with, remove or disable an alarm. Doing so is a breach of the tenancy agreement, and if a fire occurs it becomes a very serious problem beyond the tenancy.
This matters because the flat culture of taking a battery out to stop a chirp is both illegal and the most common precursor to a fatal fire. Fire services worldwide report attending fatal house fires where an alarm was on the ceiling and its battery was in a kitchen drawer.
The specific flat hazards
· Cooking at 2am after drinking. This is the single largest cause of flat fires. Somebody puts oil on, sits down, and falls asleep.
· Too few power points. Six people, one lounge, and a tower of daisy chained multiboxes behind the couch running heaters, consoles and a bar fridge.
· Portable heaters in bedrooms, frequently within reach of a duvet or a pile of clothes, and frequently left running overnight.
· Candles and incense, particularly on a windowsill next to a curtain or on a bedside table next to a bed.
· Dryers run constantly with a lint filter nobody has ever cleaned.
· Blocked exits. Bikes in the hallway, a mattress against the back door, furniture in front of the windows that form the second escape route.
The nuisance alarm problem, and the right way to handle it
Flat kitchens are small, often poorly ventilated, and produce a lot of steam and smoke that is not fire. If there is a smoke detector within three metres of the hob, it will go off regularly, and that is what leads to it being disabled.
The correct fix is not the screwdriver. It is to raise it with the landlord, because the right product for a kitchen is a heat alarm, which triggers on rapid temperature rise rather than airborne particles and simply ignores steam and burnt toast. A photoelectric smoke unit at least three metres away covers the rest of the space.
In the meantime, use the hush or silence function if the unit has one. That is exactly what it is for, and it silences the alarm temporarily without disabling it.
Do the check when you move in
Take ten minutes on move in day, before the flat fills up with stuff.
Count the alarms and check there is one within three metres of every bedroom door and one on each level. Press and hold the test button on each. Twist each one off its mount and read the date of manufacture on the back, because alarms have a ten year service life from that date and a lot of flats have units well past it. Note anything missing, expired or not working, and email the landlord or property manager in writing. Photograph everything.
Writing it down protects you. If a problem is documented and unresolved, that is a very different position to having said nothing.
Then have the awkward conversation once
Flats never do this and it takes five minutes. Walk the two ways out of the house. Check the back door is not blocked and the key is not lost. Agree a meeting point on the footpath. Agree that nobody goes back in for anything, including a laptop or a pet.
Agree also that if anyone is cooking after a night out, someone stays in the kitchen. That one rule prevents the most common flat fire outright.
If you are the one renting it out
For landlords of student and shared housing, the practical advice is to over specify rather than meet the minimum. Sealed ten year lithium units remove batteries from the equation entirely, so there is nothing for a tenant to remove and no annual change to chase. Heat alarms in the kitchen and laundry remove the main cause of nuisance disabling. Interconnected units mean a fire in a downstairs kitchen sounds in an upstairs bedroom immediately, which matters in a house full of people asleep behind closed doors.
On Point Distribution supplies CAVIUS, Watchman and SmartSense to more than 700 retailers and electrical wholesalers across New Zealand including trade channels, so sourcing a compliant smoke detector nz with a sealed long life battery, plus matching heat alarms, is straightforward for portfolio work.
The one rule
Whatever else happens in a flat, the battery stays in the alarm. Everything else on this list is a good idea. That one is not negotiable.
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