Apologies for the delay.
It is a domestic large house in Scotland with thick walls, that is being converted for use for (usually weekly) holiday lets. The house sleeps up to about 16-20 people. We simply want to comply with the law of the land. No, we do not want to pay money in order to find out what the law of the land is (!!). No, our local library does not have a copy of this BS document.
I don't want to say too much because I do not want this location to be identified. I am told that once we get an official inspection by the authorities then we will be in real trouble but until that happens apparently we are okay.
We definitely do not want to put our guests in any unnecesary danger whatsoever - we simply want to apply common sense.
We do not want to lose the homely feel of the building and wind up with the place feeling like "an institution" with hideous signs and equipment all over the building. i.e. We want to do the absolute minimum that complies with the law.
We have already paid well over £500 to get a local expert to do a Fire Risk Assessment. This expert has 'recommended' a very long list of (extremely expensive) things that we are supposed to do "immediately" including putting automatic door closing mechanisms onto over 25 doors, install emergency escape lights everywhere and install a "Category L1 System", whatever the heck that is.
If we did everything on his list immediately we would be bankrupted.
I feel that the fire regulations is in effect "gravy train" for peole in the industry who have trained up to become "experts" and that the whole subject is wrapped in mistique, complications and disgustingly expensive reports.
Apparently the default suggestion to comply with "L1" would be to dig up the floors and install a "fully wired" system complete with a central panel. This would involve weeks of labour by an electrician and would be horrendously expensive.
We feel that fire alarm technology is improving every year and that currently it still has a very, VERY long way to do. For this reason the longer we can delay the better it will be.
We have looked into installing a wireless alarm system with sensors (that have 10 year batteries) and which can 'daisy-chain' together so that the alarm signal can get from one end of the house to the other without wires. However apparently the system (from Safelinks) can only have 12 sensor units connecting to each other at once, whereas we probably up to need up to say 20 units.
I am no expert but it seems to me that what *ought* to happen is that all sensor units should be able to be given a unique number each and then, when an alarm goes off on any one unit, that it should be able to send both the alarm signal and the unique number of the unit that went off, from sensor-to-sensor-to-sensor around the house. All we would then need is a map of the house somewhere with a list of sensor serial numbers and the problem is solved.
However we don't seem to be able to find a wirelss alarm system that work like this.
Regarding night lights, the cheapest simpliest thing we can thing of is to supply a small (one-handed) self-wind torch beside each bed for guest to use in case of emergency. We will stick labels saying "FIRE TORCH" and "EMERGENY USE ONLY". This will save use many 1000s of GBP.