PERTHSelling a house in WA? Your battery smoke alarms probably aren't legal
Western Australia requires compliant mains-powered smoke alarms before a home changes hands. What that means, when a battery alarm is still allowed
Of all the things that hold up a settlement in this state, this is the one that annoys people most, because it is small, it is cheap, and almost nobody knows about it until somebody points at the ceiling.
Western Australia requires compliant smoke alarms in a dwelling before it is sold, before ownership transfers, and before it is rented or hired. Not after. Before. It is the owner's obligation, which means the seller's, and it does not go away because the buyer did not mention it.
What "compliant" actually means here
Four things, and all four have to be true at once.
The alarm has to be permanently connected to mains power. Hard-wired, by a licensed electrician. The nine-volt unit screwed to the hallway ceiling in 1996 does not satisfy this, no matter how enthusiastically it chirps when you press the button.
It has to be no more than ten years old at the time of transfer. Alarms have a date stamped on them, usually on the back, and ten years is the design life rather than a bureaucratic invention. The sensor degrades whether or not the thing still beeps.
It has to be in working order. Obvious, and still the one that fails, usually because somebody removed the battery in the night after it chirped and never put it back.
And it has to comply with AS 3786:2014. Alarms made to the 1993 version of that standard stopped being acceptable for new installations from 1 May 2017. Look for the standard number printed on the alarm itself.
When a battery alarm is still allowed
There is an exemption, and it is narrower than people hope.
A battery-powered alarm is permitted where there is no hidden space to run the wiring for a mains-powered one, and no appropriate alternative location. The examples the regulator gives are a concrete ceiling, or a flat roof with no ceiling cavity above it. In that situation you do not need local government approval. In other circumstances you may.
Where the exemption applies, the battery has to be a ten-year life battery that cannot be removed. A sealed unit. Not something you can pop the back off and borrow for a television remote.
The two-storey example is the one worth remembering, because it catches people. If the ground floor has a concrete ceiling, a battery alarm may be allowed down there. That does not extend upstairs. If there is roof space above the upper floor, the upper floor alarm has to be hard-wired. Same house, two different answers, and an electrician who quotes for one and not the other has misread it.
What it costs to get wrong
A home offered for sale, rent or hire without a smoke alarm can attract a $1,000 infringement notice. An owner or landlord who offers a dwelling for hire without compliant alarms can be fined up to $5,000.
Against that, a sparky fitting two hard-wired alarms is a couple of hundred dollars and an afternoon. The maths is not difficult. What makes it painful is timing: found the week before settlement, it becomes an argument between two sets of lawyers over a job worth less than the argument.
Where this shows up in an inspection
We check the alarms on every pre-purchase inspection and we say plainly which of the four tests they fail, because "smoke alarms present" is not the same statement as "smoke alarms compliant" and only one of them is useful to you.
If you are buying, this is a bargaining item and a small one, but it is also a tell. A house where the alarms were never upgraded is usually a house where a few other obligations were also allowed to drift, and that is worth knowing before you look at the roof.
If you are selling, deal with it now. A pre-sale inspection exists precisely so the list of small compliance items lands on your desk while you still have months, rather than on a settlement agent's desk while you have days.
Next: whether your alarms need to be interconnected, which depends entirely on one date in 2015.
Why the requirement bites at the point of sale
The smoke alarm requirement is triggered by particular events, and the sale or transfer of a home is one of them, which is why it becomes a live issue precisely when a property changes hands. Before a home in Western Australia is sold, it must have compliant smoke alarms, mains-powered, compliant with the standard, and within their service life, and this is the seller's obligation rather than the buyer's. The logic of tying the requirement to the point of sale is that it is a natural moment to bring a home up to the current safety standard, when it is changing hands anyway, and it ensures that a buyer takes on a home whose smoke alarms meet the requirement rather than inheriting a compliance gap they did not create.
This catches sellers out with some regularity, because a home that has been lived in for years may still have the smoke alarms it was built or last renovated with, which for an older home can mean battery units or alarms past their service life that no longer meet the requirement. The seller who has never had cause to think about their smoke alarms discovers, in the process of selling, that bringing them into compliance is their responsibility and their cost. It is not usually an expensive fix, but it is one that has to be done, and it is far better identified early in the sale process than discovered as a last-minute problem close to settlement.
When a battery alarm is still allowed
The general requirement is for mains-powered, hard-wired smoke alarms, but there is a narrow exception, and it is worth understanding both that it exists and how narrow it is, because it is often misunderstood or over-relied upon. Where it is genuinely not practical to install a mains-powered alarm, in particular circumstances such as a home with a concrete ceiling or no roof space or cavity through which to run the wiring, a battery-powered alarm of the appropriate type may be permitted as an alternative. The exception exists for the real cases where hard-wiring is genuinely impractical, not as a general escape from the mains-powered requirement.
The mistake people make is to assume the exception applies to them when it does not. A house with a roof space through which wiring could be run does not qualify for the battery exception simply because battery alarms are cheaper or easier; the exception is about genuine impracticality, not convenience. Most houses can be hard-wired, and for most houses the mains-powered requirement applies in full. Where the exception does apply, the battery alarm still has to be of the appropriate compliant type; it is not a licence to keep any old battery unit on the ceiling. Understanding the narrowness of the exception is what stops a seller from wrongly assuming their old battery alarms are acceptable when the requirement is actually for hard-wired ones.
Where it shows up in an inspection
Smoke alarms are one of the safety and compliance items an inspection assesses, and because the requirement is tied to sale, they are directly relevant to a transaction. An inspection can note whether the alarms present appear to be mains-powered or battery, whether they appear to be within their service life, and where they are located relative to the bedrooms and the storeys, and can flag where the alarms do not appear to meet the requirement. For a seller, having this identified early, ideally before the home is on the market, means the compliance gap can be fixed calmly rather than becoming a settlement-eve scramble. For a buyer, it is confirmation of whether the alarms in the home they are buying meet the requirement, which is the seller's obligation to deliver.
This is one of the reasons an inspection reports smoke alarms as a compliance item rather than burying them in general observations, because for a property that is being sold they are not just a safety feature but a legal requirement with a defined trigger, and their status is something both parties to a sale have reason to know. Alongside the related electrical safety requirements that attach at the same trigger, the smoke alarms are part of the set of compliance items that a well-run sale addresses rather than leaves to chance, and an inspection that flags them clearly helps both the seller meet their obligation and the buyer understand what they are taking on.
Common questions
Do I need to replace smoke alarms before selling a house in WA?
Yes. A dwelling must have compliant smoke alarms before sale or transfer of ownership. They must be mains-powered, no more than ten years old, in working order, and compliant with AS 3786:2014.
Can I use battery smoke alarms instead?
Only where there is no hidden space to run wiring and no appropriate alternative location, such as a concrete ceiling or a flat roof with no ceiling cavity. Where permitted, the battery must be a sealed ten-year battery that cannot be removed.
What is the penalty?
A home offered for sale, rent or hire without a smoke alarm can attract a $1,000 infringement notice. An owner offering a dwelling for hire without compliant alarms can be fined up to $5,000.
This comes up on every pre-purchase building inspection and pre-settlement inspection we carry out.
Read next: do your smoke alarms have to be interconnected in WA? and short-stay smoke alarm rules changed.
Sources
Read rather than recalled. Summarised here; the documents themselves are Crown copyright and are linked rather than reproduced.