smoke detector information
All buildings or structures occupied in whole or in part for residential purposes upon the sale or transfer shall be equipped by the seller with approved smoke detectors as required by MGL Chapter148 § 26F.
Smoke Detector Placement
The State law requires an operating smoke detector on every habitable level, including the basement. Finished attic spaces also need smoke detector coverage.
- First Floor – An approved smoke detector shall be installed on the ceiling of each stairway leading to the floor above, near the base of, but not within each stairwell. A smoke detector should also be placed outside the bedroom door. Installing photoelectric type smoke detectors or placing the detector more than 6 feet from a kitchen or bathroom with a bath or shower will help to avoid nuisance alarms.
- Second Floor – An approved smoke detector shall be installed on the ceiling in the hallway outside the bedrooms.
- Basement - An approved smoke detector shall be installed on the ceiling of the basement stairway leading to the floor above, near the base of, but not within the stairwell. If the ceiling is unfinished, place the detector on the edge of the joist (not in the bay between the ceiling/floor joists).
- General Information – Ceilings that are vaulted or sloped, the detector shall be placed on the higher side. Peaked ceilings shall have the detector located within three feet of the peak and tray ceilings shall have the detector placed within the tray. Remember, heat and smoke rise and will travel to these places first. With approved smoke detectors installed in the proper locations; early warning it will give you the best chance of survival in a fire.
- see diagrams
Testing Before Inspection
Test each smoke detector in your home prior to your scheduled inspection, if any one of the detectors is not functioning properly you will not be issued a Certificate of Compliance. A fresh battery should be placed in each detector and marked with a date. Hardwired smoke detectors (in newer homes) need to be tested for proper operation. Hardwired smoke detectors are interconnected and should activate all the other hardwired smoke detectors in the home.
Inspection Appointments
To schedule an appointment, visit the Fire Prevention Office, located at the Town Office Building at 36 Bartlet Street, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. or request an inspection from this web site. Inspections are scheduled between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., Tuesday thru Friday. The inspection fee is payable to the Town of Andover. A Certificate of Compliance will be issued after the inspection and payment of the fee. The certificate is valid for 60 days from the date of inspection. You are urged not to wait until the last minute before closing on a property to receive an inspection.
Required House Numbers
Chapter 148, Section 59. Every building in the Commonwealth shall have a number easily visible from the street affixed to the building. A number on the mailbox is not sufficient.
Other Useful Information About Smoke Detectors
Why home smoke detectors should be replaced after 10 years.
Smoke detectors are one of the most important safety features of your home. Properly installed, working smoke detectors will give you the early warning you need to safely escape from a fire. But how do you make sure your detectors are working? One important way is to replace them after 10 years. As electronic devices, detectors are subject to random failures. Product, installation, and maintenance standards are used to assure products work as designed despite this. Part of the technical basis for the first detector product standard was an assessment of expected failure rate, estimated at four per million hours of operation or one every 30 years. Early field studies of detector reliability, notably by Canada's Ontario Housing Corporation, confirmed the essential accuracy of this estimate, restated as a 3% failure rate per year. This means a very small fraction of home smoke detectors will fail almost immediately, and 3% will fail by the end of the first year. After 30 years, nearly all the detectors will have failed, most years earlier.
How soon should you replace your detector?
This is a value judgment. Only 3% of detectors are likely to fail in the first year, and annual replacement would be very expensive, so that doesn't make sense. At 15 years, the chances are better than 50/50 that your detector has failed, and that seems too big a risk to take. Manufacturers' warranties for the early detectors typically ran out in 3-5 years. So, in ten years there is roughly a 30% probability of failure before replacement. This seemed to balance safety and cost in a way that made sense to the responsible technical committees. If a 30% failure probability still seems too high, remember that replacement on a schedule is only a backup for replacement based on testing. A national study found that when home smoke detectors fail, tend to fail completely. Regular monthly testing will help discover detector failure as well as a dead or missing battery. The same study showed all the inoperable detectors tested in 1992 were at least 5 years old and predated a 1987 change in product standards that reduced sensitivity to reduce nuisance alarms. Changes in detector chip design, among other improvements, make it likely that electronic failure now occurs at a rate much less than 4 times per million hours of operation. Replacing detectors after 10 years protects against the accumulated chance of failure, but monthly testing is still your best means of making sure detectors work. Today's detectors are even less vulnerable than the older models to failure.
