ᐅ Smoke Alarms: Will Regular Inspections Soon Incur Charges?

According to our electrician, a mandatory annual functional test of smoke detectors by a professional company will soon be required. The electrician’s fee would be 45 € (about 48 USD). Does anyone know anything about this?

Yes, it has been mandatory since this or last year. But you can also carry out the inspection yourself :P

Of course, I can do it myself, it just sounded like, for legal reasons (state building code Saarland?), you would have to pay someone else again.

One more thing: this is a common request from your electrician.

It is true that a functional test/maintenance must be carried out once a year.
This is described in the user manual; otherwise, the warranty will expire, and false alarms cannot be ruled out.

Usually, this is limited to pressing the test button, dusting off the device, and checking whether the smoke detector has expired. But the manual provides details on this.

Correct. That is exactly what I meant with my statement above.

Basically, it’s a legal formality. If the house burns down in 10 years and someone gets hurt, the insurance company and others will want proof that the smoke detector hasn’t been inactive for 5 years due to a missing battery. Otherwise, they won’t pay out, and the owner could face charges for negligent homicide or something similar.

Since the smoke detector is the owner’s responsibility, this protects the tenant—or, in some cases, the tenant is held financially responsible.