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A few extra seconds. That’s often the difference between waking up to a smoke alarm and not waking up at all. And right now, Queensland’s rules don’t actually guarantee those seconds.
The current smoke alarm rules only say alarms need to go somewhere in the hallway outside your bedrooms. No minimum distance, no maximum distance. Just… somewhere.
That could mean an alarm several metres from your bedroom door — several extra seconds for smoke to reach it, and several extra seconds before the sound reaches you while you’re asleep.
That gap should have already been closed by the last update to the Building Code. It wasn’t.
A newer Australian Standard — AS1670.6-2023, released in 2023 — was developed specifically to fix this, setting a proper, measurable rule: a hallway smoke alarm has to be within 3 metres of a bedroom door.
It wasn’t the only fix, either. AS1670.6-2023 also increased the required clearance between a smoke alarm and an air-conditioning vent, because airflow can delay smoke actually reaching the sensor. It’s a small detail, but it makes a real difference to how fast an alarm actually detects smoke.
AS1670.6-2023 was meant to be adopted into the National Construction Code 2025 edition — the last time the Code was updated. It simply got missed, due to timing and process, not because anyone decided the old vague rules were good enough.
It’s still sitting there today as an advisory document, waiting for the next Code update. But the whole reason it was released is to fix a genuine safety gap, and that reasoning doesn’t disappear just because the last Code update missed it.
Most installers won’t know any of this. It’s not in the current Code, so there’s no requirement to know it, and most people doing smoke alarm work simply haven’t come across it.
With Queensland’s compliance deadline of 1 January 2027 driving a huge number of installs this year, whatever standard your alarms go in to today is likely to stay in place for a very long time — Code changes don’t apply retrospectively.
That makes now exactly the time to get alarms installed to the standard that should already be in force, rather than the bare legal minimum most homes end up with simply because that’s what most installers know to install.
AS1670.6-2023: The Smoke Alarm Standard Queensland Missed (And Why It Still Matters)
A few extra seconds. That’s often the difference between waking up to a smoke alarm and not waking up at all. And right now, Queensland’s rules don’t actually guarantee those seconds.
The current smoke alarm rules only say alarms need to go somewhere in the hallway outside your bedrooms. No minimum distance, no maximum distance. Just… somewhere.
That could mean an alarm several metres from your bedroom door — several extra seconds for smoke to reach it, and several extra seconds before the sound reaches you while you’re asleep.
That gap should have already been closed by the last update to the Building Code. It wasn’t.
A newer Australian Standard — AS1670.6-2023, released in 2023 — was developed specifically to fix this, setting a proper, measurable rule: a hallway smoke alarm has to be within 3 metres of a bedroom door.
It wasn’t the only fix, either. AS1670.6-2023 also increased the required clearance between a smoke alarm and an air-conditioning vent, because airflow can delay smoke actually reaching the sensor. It’s a small detail, but it makes a real difference to how fast an alarm actually detects smoke.
AS1670.6-2023 was meant to be adopted into the National Construction Code 2025 edition — the last time the Code was updated. It simply got missed, due to timing and process, not because anyone decided the old vague rules were good enough.
It’s still sitting there today as an advisory document, waiting for the next Code update. But the whole reason it was released is to fix a genuine safety gap, and that reasoning doesn’t disappear just because the last Code update missed it.
Most installers won’t know any of this. It’s not in the current Code, so there’s no requirement to know it, and most people doing smoke alarm work simply haven’t come across it.
With Queensland’s compliance deadline of 1 January 2027 driving a huge number of installs this year, whatever standard your alarms go in to today is likely to stay in place for a very long time — Code changes don’t apply retrospectively.
That makes now exactly the time to get alarms installed to the standard that should already be in force, rather than the bare legal minimum most homes end up with simply because that’s what most installers know to install.
Queensland’s official smoke alarm rules set a floor, not a ceiling. AS1670.6-2023 shows where the standard is genuinely heading, and installing to it now — while a huge wave of compliance work is already underway ahead of the 2027 deadline — means not having to redo the work later. Building to where the standard is heading, not just where it currently sits, is the difference between a technically compliant alarm and one that gives you those extra seconds when it matters.
This article is general information based on Australian Standards current as of publication. It is not legal or building advice — for guidance specific to your property, consult a licensed smoke alarm installer or building certifier.
