On Sun, 14 Jun 2015 14:28:40 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

Or do what I do and put a prominent non-maintained emergency light
on
the same circuit. Useful in its own right.

Yup that was my preferred solution as well.

Good idea, there is a non-maintiand emergenct light above the strairs
but I think it's on a lighting circuit not the dedicated smokes one.
I'm not going to play just at the moment...

I also fitted a centralised switch so that the alarms can be tested or
silenced from one place easily (since some are well out of reach on 10'
high ceilings)

Yep, ours has "locate", "test" and "silence".

No one has mentioned that the smokes wiring ought to be done in red
three core and earth. I'd also do it as a seperate circuit for the
smokes only even if the power comes of a lighting circuit rather tahn
just picking up the nearest bit of lighting power.

--
Cheers
Dave.