Residential Real Estate Broker · Chicago Suburbs, IL · Member since 2013 · 1k+ posts · 594 votes
Attention Rental Property Owners in Illinois
Call your State Senator and tell them to VOTE NO TO SB2837.
A proposal being considered in Springfield will require all single family homes and apartments, outside of Chicago and built before July 1, 1988, to replace existing smoke detectors with detectors that have non-replaceable batteries.
Here are the facts:
Property owners would have to comply on January 1, 2017.
Failure to comply is a criminal offense of a Class B Misdemeanor.
This proposal is an initiative of Smoke Detector Manufacturers.
The bill sponsor is a Chicago Senator but the law does not apply to Chicago.
The Illinois Rental Property Owners Association is opposed to this unnecessary legislation.
Here are the reasons why:
The type of battery in a smoke detector does not make the detector work better
People remove batteries when the detector goes off while cooking. If they can’t remove the battery they remove the whole detector. Is that better?
If the bill is for safety why does it not apply to Chicago?
This law is an unnecessary expense for property owners for the benefit of smoke detector manufacturers.
Contractor · Romeoville, IL · Member since 2015 · 198 posts · 137 votes
10y
This really is a small issue, fact is they sell 10-year non-replaceable battery smoke detectors for about $15 dollars each. As a landlord, you'll save at least twice that over a 10 year span in the cost of replacement batteries alone annually per unit. I think it gets more expensive if you are required to hard wire an interconnecting system that isn't already there which is usually the case if you have any experience pulling electrical permits in the state. Many communities require hard wired smokes in every sleeping quarter of the house and on each floor, not just within 15' of them. I tend to think that if you are allowed to use individual battery operated detectors then the proposed changes make a lot of sense.